West Bank vote to gauge Hamas

Shikaki's polling organization, based in Ramallah, found in its most recent survey, released Wednesday, that Hamas's campaign to claim credit for Israel's withdrawal has met with relative success. Some 40 percent of the Palestinians give Hamas most credit for evacuating the Gaza Strip, compared to 32 percent to Fatah, the wing of the PLO headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. But Fatah, the poll found, is benefiting from the increased optimism that has flourished after the Israeli withdrawal.

If national elections were held today, the survey found, 47 percent would vote for Fatah while only 30 percent would vote for Hamas. That poll shows a 3 percent drop in support for Hamas when compared with figures from three months ago.

"More people than ever believe that violence has been very useful for Palestinians to achieve their national rights ... but it drove the public to draw all of the opposite conclusions," Shikaki says. "People want a focus to be on issues of rebuilding and reconstruction, and now there is less support for violence."

But the current environment is beginning to look like a replay of the violence that marked many periods during the intifada, which exploded five years ago after a breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Following a series of Kassem rocket attacks on southern Israel over the weekend, Israel launched raids in Gaza. It also arrested more than 200 suspected militants and activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, which some Palestinians say was an attempt to suppress support for those groups at polls.

Mr. Shalabi, the Hamas candidate, says the Israeli arrests are aimed at locking Hamas out of the power-sharing. "The people understand the message very clearly. There is a clear war against the Islamic parties and the right to build and construct civil service institutions."

And yet, other voters were critical of this week's violence, saying that Palestinian attacks on Israeli cities were a mistake liable to destabilize newly liberated Gaza.

"Launching the Kassams is a mistake, for sure," says Jameel Saafi. "We have to maintain the state of calm in order to acquire our rights. How can Hamas think it can compete with Israel's power and force? People are fed up, that's for sure. People are not happy with the consequences of such attacks."

Also Thursday, three militants were killed during a raid in the city of Jenin. The head of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades there, a militant offshoot of the PLO, said that the raids marked the end of a truce with Israel the group had respected for the past six months.

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