The Hamas revolution

[bemildred]

Long, some interesting bits.

It began with whispering that rippled around the room, then rose quickly into gasps. The diplomats and officials crowding the auditorium at Ramallah's Cultural Centre on a dark, freezing evening for the Palestinian election results had expected something extraordinary, primed by leaks from the Independent Electoral Commission.

But as returning officer Hanna Nasser stood up last Wednesday to announce the results of Palestine's first elections in 10 years, it was the detail that sent the waves of shock around the hall: a geographical audit, city by city, of an electoral landslide.

'East Jerusalem,' he intoned dryly from the podium, 'six seats.' And with each successful candidate he named, he listed their party. 'Change and Reform,' he read out first, the banner under which Hamas, an organisation better known for its dozens of suicide attacks against Israel, was standing. And again: 'Change and Reform'. And yet again. Four times out of six.

He turned to Hebron, a clean nine-seat sweep for Hamas. So he continued through Nablus, North Gaza, Tulkarm, Jenin and Gaza City. Even the largely Christian area of Bethlehem saw two of its four seats fall to Hamas. Among the Gaza winners was Um Nidal, also called Mariam Farah, a gun-toting woman known as the 'Mother of Martyrs' who ordered three of her sons to their deaths as suicide bombers.

Observer.Guardian UK