ABSTRACT
The Palestinian Central Elections Committee shocked the world on January 26, 2006, when it announced that the Islamist part had won a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament. There was no refuting the fact that Hamas has won a legitimate landslide victory. This sweeping victory for Hamas represented an electoral revolution in the governing body that is the nearest the Palestinians have to a Western-style parliament. The result was the political ascendance of a religiously oriented resistance movement with an active military wing to the majority party in Palestinian parliamentary politics. Readers in that country were not informed of Hamas's dramatic shift in policy in preparation for entrance into electoral politics. They were, however, informed by The New York Times that Hamas, running for the first time in Palestinian Authority elections, says that it is prepared to consider a long-term truce with Israel within its 1967 boundaries.
