ABSTRACT
Started as a militant Islamist movement against the Jewish state of Israel, Hamas emerged as the largest political party in Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006. The election results represented a major shift in the Palestinian political landscape, which had previously been dominated by Fatah, the biggest faction of the PLO. The movement’s extensive welfare networks and reputation for discipline and reliability gained it support from voters already frustrated at the failure of the Oslo peace process and corruption and incompetence of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. With the spurt in its popularity, Hamas posed a serious threat to Fatah’s decade-old hegemony in Palestinian politics. Factors accounting for the electoral success of the Hamas are the main focus of this chapter. It is argued that the failure of the Oslo peace process together with misrule of the Fatah-led PA created conditions conducive to the surge in popular support for Hamas, undermining Fatah’s ascendancy in Palestinian politics. However, the bulk of this chapter is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the elections in the Palestinian Authority (PA), one of the principal objectives of the Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed by Israeli and Palestinian leaders in September 1993. It begins with the first Palestinian general elections held in 1996, followed by the municipal and presidential election in 2005, and finally, the 2006 Palestinian legislative council elections that culminated in bloody fratricidal war leading to split into “Hamastan” and “Fatahland.”
