Ben Lynfield

Israel’s stated intention of withdrawing from the Gaza Strip is posing new questions for Hamas, the militant Islamist group. Hamas’s leaders say they are seeking to translate the movement’s wide street popularity into a role in decision making previously monopolised by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement, which is now racked by internal crisis.

A growing sense of chaos within the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah was accentuated recently when masked gunmen shot dead Khalid al-Ziban, a veteran journalist and human rights adviser of Arafat in Gaza City. The incident came days after the PA mayor of Nablus, Ghassan Shaka, announced his intention to resign, citing lawlessness there, and after Israeli forces raided banks in the commercial capital of Ramallah last week.

Hamas’s statements in recent months have been self-confident, even defiant toward the PA, of which Fatah is the backbone. In December, it torpedoed PA attempts to forge a unilateral Palestinian cease-fire so that Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia could try to relaunch peace negotiations. And last week, in unusually blunt terms, it flatly rebuffed a call by Qureia to suspend attacks during International Court of Justice deliberations on Israel’s West Bank security barrier.

Boosted by its role at the forefront of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel, Hamas insists that its growing strength be acknowledged by Fatah. A December poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research showed that Hamas has overtaken Fatah as the most popular political grouping in the Gaza Strip. The poll, with a sampling error of 3 per cent, gave Hamas 26 per cent of popular support compared to 24 per cent for Fatah. The largest group was unaffiliated at 33 per cent. In the centre’s last poll before the intifada, in July 2000, Fatah tallied 42 per cent and Hamas 11 per cent.

At Gaza’s Islamic University, Sharif Abu Shamalla’s mood is buoyant as he holds court in his cramped office. A student councilor for Hamas’s Islamic Bloc group, which controls the council, he is surrounded by the symbols of Hamas power: a portrait of the movement’s spiritual leader, a map of historic Palestine, and a screensaver of Mahmoud Issa, a Hamas fighter assassinated by Israel last year. Most of the 130 students from the university who have died during the last three years of fighting have been from Hamas, Shamalla says. But he insists the movement is advancing not only because it is at the forefront of “armed resistance” but also because it strives to serve the public’s daily needs.

A leading Israeli analyst, Avraham Sela, says that the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, if implemented, will give Hamas a chance to convert its popularity into power. Traditionally, he notes, Hamas refrained from seeking public office on the grounds that the authority was a creation of the Oslo self-rule accords, which it rejected as a sell-out. But now, with Israel speaking of unilateral withdrawal, taking offices would not negate the Hamas ideology, he says.

But Ghazali believes the only cooperation will be in attacking remaining Israeli targets, not in sharing power. “Hamas will refuse to work under [Arafat’s] wing,” he says. “But Hamas could work with the young guard in Fatah that is angry at the organisation for not getting its share of power.”— The Christian Science Monitor