If free and reasonably fair parliamentary elections have gone ahead as scheduled at the end of January in the Palestinian territories, we are likely to witness a profound shift in power. The radical younger Fatah generation of the intifadas, represented by the imprisoned Marwan Barghouti, will soon be sitting beside Hamas in a "militant" Palestinian parliament.
This reflects the demise of the Palestinian constituency of the 1993 Oslo accords. The Oslo agreement effectively awarded one Palestinian faction, Fatah, a monopoly of power and armed force in return for dismembering their emerging political rivals. But the Palestinian voters who overwhelmingly endorsed this empowerment of that one faction are far from the Palestinian constituency of today.
The erosion of this earlier constituency and, in parallel, of the credibility of the Oslo arrangement itself, was already clearly apparent in 2001 when I served on the staff of Senator George Mitchell's fact-finding committee convened to inquire into the causes of the second intifada, which broke out in 2000. It was clear that Palestinians had broadly lost faith in the incremental Oslo approach, faced by the growth of settlements, settler-only roads, increasing numbers of checkpoints and the salami-slicing away of their prospective state. Now both the opinion polls and the Fatah primaries confirm that the earlier scepticism has been transformed into a deeper disillusion that is manifest in the overwhelming support for Hamas and the younger generation of Fatah, at the expense of the Fatah old guard.
It is common in the west to see the parliamentary elections as a struggle by Fatah, renewed by an influx of younger candidates, to fight off the "spoiler" challenge posed by Hamas. This is wrong. Many of the younger generation of Fatah are politically closer to Hamas in politics than they are to their own leadership. Moreover, it has been clear for some years that a genuine grassroots validation by the Palestinians of their aspirations and objectives would be the only route to any enduring political settlement. This is why these elections are so vital.
During the negotiations in Cairo in 2002 and 2003 between the Palestinian factions and Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence minister, designed to find common ground for a truce or hudna with the Israelis, I was often puzzled by the long delays, during which nothing seemed to be happening. On asking the Hamas leadership why this was, I was told that the group was awaiting the views of the Fatah leader Barghouti. As Barghouti was in an Israeli jail, the views of the "engineer" of the intifada, as he is dubbed in the Palestine press, took some time to reach Cairo. It was striking that Hamas valued his opinion so highly that they would refuse to proceed without it, leaving the official Fatah delegation to twiddle their thumbs.
It is of course Barghouti, still in jail, who won the Ramallah primary by a landslide and who heads the Fatah list of candidates. The mutual respect between Hamas and Barghouti has long roots that pre-date the intifada. Neither has ever made a policy statement of substance without advising the other in advance. During the second intifada, Hamas units in the West Bank worked almost in joint formations with their Tanzeem and al-Aqsa colleagues, the youth and military wings of Fatah respectively. (This closeness between Hamas and the younger members of Fatah in the West Bank is not replicated in Gaza, where Hamas and the Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan are at loggerheads.)
This strong relationship is still in place. The relationship between the younger generation and their "old guard" (largely Tunis-exile) leadership, on the other hand, borders on mutiny. The outcome of the recent Fatah primary elections exacerbated this. The primaries were non-binding, and when the old guard saw the landslide in favour of the new generation, they chose simply to ignore it when drawing up the official candidate list—save for the unavoidable inclusion of Barghouti at its head. The younger generation responded with their own list that would have split the Fatah vote. Bitter wrangling followed. The outcome is an official Fatah list that enjoys limited popular appeal, even though it has been spiced up with a few well-chosen popular figures. A number of Fatah members will stand as independents.
It is increasingly plain that Fatah will not do well at the polls. One Israeli journalist estimates that Hamas may win 60-70 seats in the new parliament, out of a total 132. Were this to occur, Hamas would certainly be invited to accept posts as ministers in a new government.
The old guard has reacted to this prospect by seeking any pretext to postpone the elections. The worsening security situation in Gaza has, in part, been deliberately engineered by the Fatah leadership and its security arms as a pretext to postpone or cancel elections.
Assuming the elections do go ahead and that the younger Fatah and Hamas do dominate the parliament, they will seek what they regard as an inclusive Palestinian politics—in contrast to that of Oslo. Hamas will aim to rally as many of the factions as possible to agree on Palestinian national objectives. They will lay out the means to achieve those objectives and designate a popular leadership able to bring them about.
More recently, Hamas spokesmen have emphasised the possibility of a complete cessation of violence, to be agreed and reciprocated by Israel, that would last a full generation and that, unlike past truces, would deal with all the outstanding issues that might be resolved in a long-term period of calm. The negotiation that they envision would proceed from the basis of withdrawal from the lands occupied in 1967 and a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. We are likely to see concrete proposals emerge after the elections. The proposal for a ceasefire does not however imply that Hamas will accept disarmament at the outset of the process. They believe that every people has the right to self-defence; but demilitarisation in step with political progress, as seen in Northern Ireland, is possible.
Hamas is a political movement that detached itself from the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s. Like other such movements, it is interested in shaping political solutions to political problems. It is committed to elections, political participation, constitutional guarantees of civil rights and, above all, of reform: reform of government and of state institutions, and an end to corruption. Younger members of Fatah share these aspirations. Where Hamas has been so successful is in the provision of welfare and community services which are viewed by all sections of society as a model of effective and incorrupt provision of such assistance.
Two years ago, no one in Israel would have forecast that Hamas would successfully contest the parliamentary elections, that it would have expressed a willingness to assume government posts in the Oslo-created Palestinian authority, that it would have publicly accepted participation in a broad-based Palestinian negotiating team, and that two prominent Hamas leaders would announce that the Hamas charter which calls for the liberation of both the lands occupied in 1967 and the original 1948 territory, is not sacrosanct—and can be changed.
A reinvigorated Palestinian polity may yet offer an unexpected window for political agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. Engaging in talks with a revived Palestinian political leadership will be difficult for Israel—it was not easy for the British government to talk with Sinn Fein—but it offers the best chance for an enduring settlement.
