Free Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East by Robin Wright

calm, and to hold local and legislative elections without delay. 21
    In staggered votes over the next nine months, Hamas surprised even Hamas. By the final vote in December 2005, the Islamist party had won full or partial control of councils in most major towns, including historically Christian Bethlehem and other former Fatah strongholds. The one exception was Ramallah. In contrast, Fatah proved strong mainly in the politically marginal rural areas. 22
    A month later, Hamas was running for the first time in national elections.
    In both votes, Hamas ran on a twenty-point platform of everyday issues—more health care, better education, improved infrastructure—though not piety. Like many of the Middle East’s rising Islamist movements, Hamas was moving deliberately, but practically.
    “We need to change many things, but step by step,” Sheikh Nayef told me.
    “We have two big priorities,” he explained. “The first is corruption. Betraying the people’s trust is one of the main reasons for people’s disenchantment with Fatah and why they are turning to Hamas.
    “The second is dealing with the chaos and lawlessness in the territories,” he continued, in Arabic, relying on a reporter from aljazeera.net who said he had studied at the University of Oklahoma and Southern Illinois University. “Those responsible for this insecurity are the Palestinian security agencies. We have to reconstruct them. They are entirely bloated and yet they have utterly failed to end the chaos. Over half of the 58,000 on the payroll draw a salary but never leave their homes. It is nepotism and graft and cronyism.”
    I pointed out that his brother had controlled the West Bank security force.
    “I am aware,” he said, with a bemused grin.
    To a lot of ears, the security-force issue was doublespeak for peace with Israel. Whoever controlled Palestinian security determined whether the Palestinian forces were used for peace or to pressure Israel.
    On election eve, the big debate among both Palestinians and Israelis was over whether a democratically elected Hamas would moderate its position—specifically by implicitly honoring the principles and agreements made by the PLO even if it did not formally sign on. In other words, would Hamas be willing to repeat what Fatah did in 1988 in formally renouncing terrorism and accepting Israel’s right to exist? Hamas had launched its first suicide bomb in 1993. Since the second intifada began in 2000, the militant movement was linked to more than 400 terrorist attacks—including over fifty suicide bombs—in which hundreds of Israelis had died and more than 2,000 had been injured. 23
    Some Hamas leaders hinted at the possibility of an indefinite hudna, or ceasefire, if Israel returned all territory occupied in the 1967 war. But none of them suggested that Hamas would accept a permanent peace.
    I asked the sheikh—who had been released just four months earlier after eight months in Israeli detention—how far apart he was from his older brother on peace with Israel. “We agree when diagnosing political problems, but we differ on how to treat them,” he replied, as his fingers flicked through a large set of worry beads. “Jibril’s approach is based on negotiating with Israel. The Islamic movement’s experience in negotiating has been dismal and disastrous. The Palestinian Authority was eventually reduced to a vanquished supplicant begging Israel for everything. This giant fiasco will not be repeated by us.”
    I noted that he had not totally rejected negotiations with Israel. For decades, Arafat had deftly skirted the same issue. Time and again, he came close in deliberately suggestive but ambiguous language, only to back off again when asked to clarify. Only when Arafat began to lose his political grip did he formally cave.
    “What you said is true,” Sheikh Nayef replied. “If negotiations have the potential to serve the interests of the Palestinian people or improve the lot of average