The bland announcement President Mahmoud Abbas made when he said that Palestinian elections would be postponed failed to hide the deep divisions within his Fatah Party. Abbas' public statement merely said he had decided to postpone the July 17 election indefinitely because "the Legislative Council did not finalize the election law and we are running out of time. Therefore, the election should be postponed until the legal procedures and consultations are complete." Beneath this reason, however, a heated dispute threatens to bubble over. It is an open secret that the delay in the elections is meant to allow time to resolve a dispute over proposed reforms to the voting law. What Abbas did not mention is that the parliamentary poll was put off because of discord within the party concerning reforms to the voting law which were sought by Abbas himself in order to give smaller factions such as Hamas a better chance of gaining seats. In short, several Fatah members are worried that Hamas has become too big for its breeches. They point the finger directly at Abbas who has refused to crackdown on activist groups such as Hamas, fearing a crackdown would result in civil war. In place of a crackdown, he has encouraged Hamas to enter mainstream politics. The group took full advantage, entering municipal electoral politics for the first time at the end of last year, and doing much better than observers expected. Though it was beaten by Fatah, Hamas won important contests in big population centers in Rafah in Gaza, and Qalqilya in the West Bank and was hoping it could do the same in July's general election in which it might take a third of the seats. Fatah is gambling that a delay in the elections, specifically in who and how candidates are chosen, could put a brake on the smoother-rolling Hamas machine. The delay has naturally angered Hamas which has alluded to the fragility of the cease-fire it agreed to with Abbas in February. Surprisingly though, even an end to the truce does not worry some people as much as a Hamas victory at the polls. Which is why several Fatah people believe there should be no parliamentary elections at all, a way of thinking that is in touch with Ariel Sharon and George Bush. Both have grown increasingly concerned about the popularity of Hamas. The concern in Washington is that if Hamas is able to exert significant influence over Parliament and the decision-making process, it will do everything it can to ensure that the Palestinian side drives the hardest possible bargain in any dealings with Israel. Not everybody fears a Hamas presence. Under Yasser Arafat, leadership elections were rare; the Fatah faction that Arafat founded and led dominated the political scene for decades. But now a phase of democratization has begun and many Palestinians want a more representative political system designed to produce a better and stronger slate of candidates. They had apparently found it - up until the announcement of the postponement of elections and with that a postponement of democratic ideals.