Hamas has discovered a weapon even more powerful than the suicide bomb -- the ballot box, writes Graham Usher in Qalqiliya "Yasser Arafat was a symbol of the Palestinian people who believed he would never have to face this day," says Mustafa Sabri, with a glint in his eye. We are sitting beneath a portrait of the late Palestinian president in the mayor's office in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya. Sabri is a city councillor from the Islamic Hamas movement, which won all 15 council seats in local elections in May. The reverberations have been felt far beyond this hamlet of 43,000 people. In Brussels, for instance, where the European Union has been wrestling with the knot caused by Hamas's democratic rise to power. The EU channels millions in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) through municipalities like Qalqiliya. But Hamas is a proscribed organisation that was placed on the EU's "terrorism" list in October 2003. European diplomats, wriggling, have said that while they will deal with elected Hamas officials, they will have no truck with those involved in violence against Israel. This may prove difficult in Qalqiliya: the newly elected mayor, Wajih Quawas, is currently serving a 32 month term in an Israeli jail for unspecified "terrorist offences". But it is Arafat's Fatah movement that is most feeling the heat. In the past Qalqiliya was not only a nationalist town but a moderate one. Prior to the Intifada 6,000 Palestinians from the town worked in Israel. Thousands of more Israelis -- Arab and Jew -- flocked to its market, drawn by cheap prices and the allure of its apricots, grapes, guava and honey. Five years on, Qalqiliya is another country. Unlike its sister West Bank Palestinian cities -- wracked by Israeli re-conquest -- Qalqiliya's bane has been the wall. Enclosing the city on three sides -- sometimes with concrete eight-metres high -- the wall has not only blocked all work in Israel; it has confiscated or isolated 83 per cent of Qalqiliya's arable land and snarled access to its 32 neighbouring villages. The result has been to turn the oasis into a desert. Unemployment stands at 63 per cent, poverty is rife, shops are shuttered and 3,000 of Qalqiliya's ablest people have fled the city. In unlit coffee houses the only glow are posters of Hamas's martyrs. So was Hamas's electoral victory a protest against the wall? "Partly", says Maarouf Zahran, Qalqiliya's mayor for the last ten years and Fatah's lead candidate in the local elections. "Those displaced by the wall felt despair. They saw Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen's moderate policies had brought them nothing. The wall radicalised Palestinian opinion and Hamas provided the social welfare -- free of charge -- to nurture the radicalism." But the wall can only explain so much, he admits. Another cause for Hamas's rise was the legacy of years of Fatah misrule. Zahran gives one example: there are many, many others. "In the last 17 years 70 families in Qalqiliya have had a father or brother killed by Fatah militia for alleged collaboration with Israel but with no due process. In Qalqiliya a family means 100 people. So how do you think they voted? They voted for revenge". Sabri agrees Hamas gained from the failure of Fatah and the PA's "national project" of peace with Israel and mismanagement at home. But it was driven by people's desire for an "Islamic project" based on resistance and service, he says. "Our policy priorities are to rebuild Qalqiliya's infrastructure, reduce unemployment, alleviate poverty and provide compensation for those damaged by the wall." But what is Islamic about it? "We want to spread an Islamic influence throughout the administration. This means greater self-accountability, greater social responsibility and greater transparency in public affairs. It is our faith that drives us to offer the best service for our people's sacrifice." It remains to be seen whether zeal survives the cold realities of governance, especially for a municipality hung by a $5 million debt and a 75 per cent non-payment of taxes. Or whether Palestine's future really is going to be Islamic. For Zahran only two things can stem the Hamas tide. "Abu Mazen has to act against corruption, especially in the upper reaches of Fatah, the security forces and the civil service. If these people go, Fatah can be unified and contest the parliamentary elections in alliance with other factions and Abu Mazen will be able to build a wide coalition behind his policies. But he must also bring change -- pulling down or at least relocating the wall to the Green Line, allowing free movement between the cities and between Gaza, the West Bank, Egypt and Jordan." Without these, Hamas's democratic rise will continue, predicts Zahran, and regardless of whether the EU or anyone else talks to it. "Hamas is already a significant force in local government. And it will become an equally significant force in national government when it contests the PA's parliamentary elections. Once you control local and national government, you control everything."
