How Will Hamas Rule?

To understand what Palestinian life might look like under Hamas, it's instructive to visit the home of Sheik Hamid al-Bitawi, high above the bustling West Bank town of Nablus. Al-Bitawi sits on the Islamic appeals court in the West Bank, the top court for all family-law matters in the region. Running as a Hamas candidate in legislative elections last month, he won a seat in the 132-member Palestinian parliament, part of a landslide victory for the militant Islamic group. Now religious conservatives like al-Bitawi find themselves in a position to promote social strictures that were only fitfully observed under the rule of the secular Fatah party. As he offers visitors a bowl of fruit, al-Bitawi recalls how, after returning to the West Bank from religious studies in Jordan in the 1970s, he looked for a future wife who covered herself in the traditional hijab, or head scarf, and the body- length jilbab. "I couldn't find a girl for months," he says. "Nowadays, 70% of Palestinian women wear these clothes. It's normal." To al-Bitawi, the change is a sign that more Palestinians are adopting the fundamentalist values that Hamas espouses. "Of course we would love to see Shari'a [Islamic law] in every home," he says. "But the reality is that some women don't wear the hijab, some people don't pray at the mosque. We can't force people."

How far Hamas goes in promoting its brand of Islam may yield answers to a dilemma that is roiling the Middle East: Will the party choose moderation, now that it has inherited responsibility for governing some 4 million Palestinians? Or will it use its power to impose a fundamentalist ideology that, coupled with its militant anti-Israel stance, has produced suicide bombings against Israel and led the U.S. and the European Union to designate it a terrorist organization?

Despite Hamas' victory at the polls, the Bush Administration has refused to budge from its insistence that it will not deal with a Hamas-led government--or continue to provide funding to the Palestinian Authority, which received a total of $1.1 billion in foreign aid last year--unless the group renounces violence and recognizes the Jewish state. The Israeli government indicated last week that it plans to impose new restrictions on the ability of Palestinians to work in Israel and may slow the movement of Palestinian goods to Israel. Hamas bristles at such measures, arguing that it was elected democratically and should be given time to prove itself in government. But the group is aware it needs help. Party leaders say if Western aid stops, the group can still sustain itself with money from countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia and wealthy benefactors from the Persian Gulf--although U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice plans to discourage such aid during a visit to the region this week. Hamas also hopes to gain some international legitimacy through a scheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow next month. Some experts say a Hamas-led government may try to wean itself off Western aid by slashing the Palestinian Authority's bloated budget. "Reform could generate substantial savings," says Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Palestinian Authority expenses are ridiculously high for the quality of the services delivered."