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

Palestinians, yes, there is room for that. But it should not be conducted under conditions reflecting Israeli insolence and arrogance of power and blackmail and so on.”
    “Look,” he said, “I am a moderate. There is a Koranic verse that says ‘Allah has made you a moderate nation, so that you may be witness upon mankind and so that the prophet will be a witness unto you.’ And I believe this.”
    I asked the sheikh if he would allow his own eight children to become suicide bombers. Hebron had gained fame as the hometown of several suicide bombers. Eight members of a local soccer team, including a coach, had all become suicide bombers.
    “You have a totally gruesome picture of us that is inaccurate,” he replied, his fingers flicking faster through the worry beads. “Martyrdom operations are not a fixed feature of the Islamic movement. They are not a pillar of our policy. They should be viewed instead as a reaction to Israeli oppression. We earnestly appeal to the Israelis to refrain from murdering Palestinian civilians so that we can put an end to martyrdom operations once and for all. We can not get rid of the effect unless we get rid of the cause.”
    I repeated my question about his children.
    “Yes, I would allow them to carry out martyrdom operations, but I would much rather focus on ruling out the causes of what has made this inevitable,” he said. “Martyrdom operations are the result of Jewish Nazism. The Israelis have presented us with two choices—either we die submissively like meek sheep or we die in suicide bombings in the streets of Tel Aviv or Netanya.”
    For the first time, the sheikh’s voice rose. “We might forgive the Israelis for murdering our innocent civilians,” he said, “but we will never forgive them for forcing us to kill their civilians.”
    Before I left, I pressed Sheikh Nayef for his election predictions. All public-opinion polls indicated Fatah was in the lead, but Hamas was pulling closer—anywhere from two to ten percentage points behind Fatah. The day before, both parties had held large rallies in Hebron. Some 4,000 had turned out for Jibril Rajoub and Fatah, but 35,000 had turned out for Sheikh Nayef and the Hamas candidates.
    I asked how the sheikh thought his own siblings were likely to vote.
    He chuckled. “I honestly don’t know,” he told me. “Some will probably vote for Jibril, and some will probably vote for me.”
    Even during their campaigns against each other, the two men had kept in touch.
    “We see each other every two or three days, and we talk by telephone every day. We’re very close,” the sheikh said. “There’s an Arab proverb—‘A difference in opinion does not corrupt friendly relations.’
    “This political diversity is a sign of the sophistication and maturity that members of one family can espouse different ideologies and political views,” he continued. “Our parents’ home was the epitome of Palestinian political plurality. We’re proud of it.
    “But,” he added, “I think both of us will win.”
    On election night, the results were announced at Ramallah’s Cultural Palace. They trickled in district by district amid great anticipation since, for the first time in an Arab election, no one knew the outcome in advance.
    In the end, Hamas swept liberal Ramallah, except for the one seat reserved for a Christian. The Islamic party won all the seats in Jerusalem, except for two reserved for Christians. It took all but one seat allocated to Nablus. Even in historically Christian Bethlehem, Hamas won all but the two seats reserved for Christians.
    The outcome stunned Palestinians—including the Rajoub brothers—as well as the outside world. Mused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “Certainly I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming, and I hope that we will take a hard look, because it does say something about perhaps not having had a good enough pulse on the Palestinian population.” 24
    In Hebron, Sheikh Nayef received more