Mohammed Kanan is a teacher of Islamic studies at a high school in this city once known as a secular stronghold of the governing Fatah movement. Now it is different kind of landmark on the scrambled electoral map of the Palestinian territories, a place that defied predictions and elected a slate of Hamas candidates to parliament.
Kanan, fastidious in a tie and closely trimmed beard as he strolled Thursday through a downtown still draped with evidence of the campaign, was part of the electoral uprising here that helped end Fatah's decade-long dominance of the Palestinian Authority. His reasons for choosing Hamas's Change and Reform ticket were based on the simple calculus that governs politics everywhere.
Hamas helped him.
The Islamic Resistance Movement, as Hamas is formally known, paid for his studies at Al-Quds University. It pays a stipend to his neighbors who have fathers and sons in Israeli jails. And it supports the families of those who have died in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including some who detonated themselves in suicide attacks that killed Israeli civilians. Committed to the destruction of Israel, Hamas maintains an armed wing that has carried out numerous bombings and other attacks.
"Naturally, they won," Kanan said. "These elections were truly democratic and showed the true will of the Palestinian people."
More than Israel
The triumph of Hamas, which has pledged to create a Palestinian nation on land that now includes the Jewish state, may appear to be a vote for broader confrontation. Israeli officials are already declaring that they no longer have a viable partner for peace talks.
But Hamas is being carried along by a more complicated mix of popular sentiments and the party's own deft organization. The party has risen on the failures of Fatah's peace efforts, the growing appeal of Islam at a time of political uncertainty, and Fatah's inability to improve Palestinians' lives at the most basic level during a decade in power.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah's leader, has dedicated his time in office to reviving negotiations with Israel under the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map," which envisioned an independent Palestinian state by the end of 2005. But in the West Bank, Israeli military checkpoints still dot the landscape, despite agreements to remove some of them, and Israeli forces carry out regular operations in many cities. In the Gaza Strip, where Jewish settlers were evacuated by the Israeli government last year, many Palestinians have concluded that fighting Israel -- as Hamas did and has pledged to keep doing -- has produced results that negotiations failed to achieve.
"Never in history has surrender brought peace," said Ahmed Ali Taha, a stooped 82-year-old merchant who said he supported Fatah in previous elections but cast his vote Wednesday for Hamas.
While Hamas's rejection of peace talks inspires young followers, its campaign also used television advertising to sand off its rougher edges for moderate voters who worried about a potential rise in violence if it prevailed.
"When it comes to their resistance, people have a right to be worried, because more than anything right now we need someone who is going to make our life easier," said Nashat Aqtash, a professor at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank who designed the Hamas media strategy. "But the social work softens that, and this is the direction they took in the campaign."
Infighting weakens Fatah
Fatah, long led by the late Yasser Arafat, began the campaign divided between younger members, who came of age in the territories during the Palestinian uprisings, and the founding generation that fills out the party's senior leadership and the Palestinian Authority, which is headquartered in Ramallah. An effort to unite the party through its first-ever primary ended in charges of fraud and two candidate lists. Abbas eventually arranged for one list, but months of potential campaign time were wasted. Hamas, meanwhile, ran its first national election campaign with its characteristic discipline.
On election day outside a polling station in the neighboring city of El Bireh, a cluster of Hamas activists set up a laptop computer loaded with a database containing voters' names and the places they were assigned to cast ballots. "At most of the voting centers we have these," said Hassan Hamudah, 44, a Hamas supporter supervising the help booth, which was draped in a green Hamas banner. "Many people registered late and don't know where to vote."
Ziad Abu Ein, a deputy minister of prisoner affairs and Fatah policymaker, pulled up to the curb in a BMW sedan, went inside and cast his ballot with confidence. Asked what he thought of the Hamas curbside operation, Abu Ein said, "It's just for show."
"This is mere propaganda," he said. "What counts is how the voter votes at the ballot box. That's all."
Unappealing choices test allegiances
In the end, many Palestinians who fear Hamas's unyielding position toward Israel nevertheless cast ballots for the movement in such places as Ramallah, where the streets are increasingly crowded with women cloaked in the way of conservative Islam. In many cases, the choices before them were less than appealing.
Hamas candidates will hold every seat here except the one reserved for a Christian. The leading Fatah candidate was Jamil Tarifi, a former government minister and big-spending businessman who was implicated in government corruption by a parliamentary committee. He lost badly.
Hamas's political operation has worked quietly but diligently for years. Public opinion polls have consistently underestimated the party's strength, partly because many of its followers are afraid of revealing their allegiance. Many Hamas activists are doing time in Israeli jails, and friction with Fatah's armed wing has been growing.
"My vote is between me and my God," said a female voter, wearing a Muslim head scarf, after casting a ballot at a secondary school here.
Hamas now faces the hard work of governing a frustrated public that expects quick progress from a party that has promised change. Kanan, the teacher, said Hamas must first address rampant unemployment, then devise a better way to distribute millions of dollars in foreign aid that the Palestinian Authority receives. Then there is war.
"Hamas is a legitimate movement fighting occupation in our land," Kanan said. "It has the right and obligation to retrieve all of our stolen rights."
