The freshly elected members of Qalqilya town council are not sure whether their new mayor knows he is about to take office. Wajia Nazal has spent the past three years in Israeli military detention without trial for membership of Hamas. But next week he will be appointed, in absentia, as Qalqilya’s mayor after his party swept aside the once dominant Fatah and won all 15 seats on the town council in Palestinian local elections.
”We always intended for Wajia to be mayor as an act of compassion because he is in prison,” said one of the new Hamas councillors, Yasser Hammad. ”But then he came top in the poll so we had no doubt.
”People have taken the opportunity to vote as revenge against Fatah. Even some from Fatah have voted for us because they were depressed by their own movement. They want to send a message by electing us to show that their own leadership has failed. The future is Hamas.”
Qalqilya represented the most sweeping success for Hamas in any big West Bank town in last week’s ballots. This can be attributed in part to local factors, including divisions in Qalqilya’s Fatah faction and the unpopularity of the outgoing mayor, accused of dictatorial tendencies.
But the victory also reflected a deepening disenchantment with Fatah, which was founded by Yasser Arafat. Hamas won more than a third of the vote, alarming Palestinian and Israeli leaders because the Islamists are likely to repeat their success in forthcoming elections to the Palestinian Parliament.
One Israeli Cabinet minister warned that Hamas’s success could scupper the ”disengagement plan” to pull Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip. Hamas’s popularity has prompted some Fatah leaders to propose delaying the parliamentary elections.
But in Qalqilya, a town of about 40 000 people that has suffered greatly from being almost entirely surrounded by the West Bank wall and fence, such views only confirm support for Hamas.
Longstanding disgruntlement with Fatah over corruption, cronyism and mismanagement while people grew poorer and hungrier is compounded by a growing sense among ordinary Palestinians that their new President, Mahmoud Abbas, is being taken for a ride by the Israelis.
Abbas has won small concessions since a summit with Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, in February at which a ceasefire was declared. A few weeks later, access to Qalqilya eased with the removal of an Israeli army checkpoint at the entrance to the town.
But on the big issues — political negotiations, Sharon’s stated intent for Israel to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the continuing grind of life under occupation — confidence in Abbas is waning.
Samir Nassar, a 30-year-old Qalqilya resident who has spent nearly half of his life in Israeli jails, said: ”All of my life I voted for Fatah but this time I voted for Hamas and it won the election because there is no competition. The people who ran things before were corrupt. Fatah is getting nowhere with Sharon. We will try the new people and judge how they do.”
Fatah’s general secretary in Qalqilya, Ahmed Hazaah, who has spent 22 years in Israeli prisons, does not disagree. ”There was anger in the streets and ultimately we were punished by the people on the streets. It’s a slap in the face for us to wake up. We totally realise it’s our own fault,” he said. ”But Hamas is not everything and it is not the majority in Palestine. We are prepared to cooperate with Hamas in relation to its support.”
Hammad said his party’s support would strengthen further when people saw that its leaders did not misuse funds, as the previous council is widely believed to have done when construction projects failed to materialise.
”Our council will not be run like the previous one where the mayor decides everything. It will be a group leadership,” he said. ”As Muslims, we have a faith that prevents us from using public money for personal use or for political or social affiliation. People will see the difference.”
The prospect of Hamas repeating its success in parliamentary elections prompted Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior aide to Abbas, to suggest the poll be delayed until after Israel completes its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in September. Fatah is also scheduled to hold a party convention in August that is expected to bring younger reformists into the leadership.
Abdel Rahim told Al Quds newspaper on Thursday that there were ”political and national reasons” to postpone the vote. The US also favours a delay because it fears a Hamas victory in the Gaza Strip would inflame opposition among Jewish settlers to pulling out of the territory.
But Hammad said Fatah and Israel had to face up to the fact that Hamas was now part of the mainstream of Palestinian politics. ”Decisions should be made collectively between us and Fatah. Hamas is part of the system,” he said.
Hamas’s success is arguably also a victory for Abbas’s strategy to put an end to the armed intifada by drawing Islamist groups into the political process.
”The political struggle is now the main struggle,” said Hammad. ”Hamas believes in negotiations if these negotiations don’t give up our rights, our political rights and social rights. If we receive our rights through the political process without weapons, we will not even touch them in the future.”
That does not impress the Israelis, who want Hamas disarmed and kept out of the government. The foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, this week warned that the Gaza withdrawal could be called off because of Hamas’s electoral success.
Sharon quickly quashed that idea but others in the government have said a Hamas presence in the Palestinian Cabinet, as seems likely before the end of the year, would be an obstacle to negotiations.
Abbas said that Israel could not have it both ways in demanding greater democracy from the Palestinians while rejecting those who were elected.
In Qalqilya there is agreement among political leaders and ordinary voters that Hamas’s victories are merely a pretext for Israel to say it cannot talk to the Palestinians. ”The Israelis always create excuses,” said Nassar. ”We could elect an Egyptian belly dancer and the Israelis would find a reason not to negotiate.” – Guardian Unlimited Â