ABSTRACT
Fatah was out of power for the first time in its history following the stunning victory of Hamas in the 26 January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections. Winning 76 out of the 132 seats, Hamas, which had been designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union (EU), prepared to lead the Palestinian parliament. The group had never entered the political realm prior to its 2006 victory, and thus it would have to be politically accommodating to retain its governing authority. Immediately after the elections, the US and the EU indicated that assistance to the PA would continue if Hamas renounced violence, recognized Israel, and accepted previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements, which Hamas refused to do. Implicit in this policy approach was the Western attempt to thwart the political change in Palestine regardless of the popular mandate in favor of Hamas. Worse still, the non-recognition of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (PA) helped deepen the schism between the two Palestinian factions, resulting in open hostility and the de facto partition of the already truncated entity. The discussion of this chapter is, though, largely confined to the role played by the external actors, namely the US, EU, and Israel, in fueling the intra-Palestinian conflict; it would highlight the reconciliation initiatives of regional actors like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt so as to prevent the fragmentation of the decade-old Palestinian nationalist movement.
