Last week, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gazashocked almost everyone — including, by all accounts,themselves — by handing the Islamist Hamas party alandslide victory in parliamentary elections.

“I guess I was surprised that they were allowed towin, not so much that they did win,” saysPalestinian-American activist Ali Abunimah. “There wasvery little support for the Palestinian Authority bythis point.”

Co-founder of the Electronic Intifada and a prolific mediaactivist, 34-year-old Abunimah is in Canada where hejust finished a speaking tour of campuses in southernOntario and Quebec.

Conventional wisdom runs that voters cast theirballots for Hamas to punish the corrupt andincompetent Fatah party, which has dominatedPalestinian politics for almost 40 years, and whichhas controlled the Palestinian Authority (PA) since it was created over adecade ago. But observers like Abunimah also seesomething else at play, something he calls the“Qalqilya effect.”

“In 2003, Israel completed a wall entirely surroundingthe city of Qalqilya, which is in the north of theWest Bank,” he says. “They are imprisoned now in agiant Israeli-controlled ghetto. Prior to the wallbeing completed, Fatah controlled all of the seats inthe Qalqilya city council. After the wall was built,in the municipal elections which were held, Hamas wonevery seat. To me, that’s a signal that that vote forHamas is a sign of people’s resistance. It’s a signthat they’re not willing to submit to Israel’s effortsto crush them and imprison them. And that, I think,was reproduced throughout the Occupied Territories.”

Abunimah is highly critical of what he calls the“peace process industry” — those governments andleaders who’ve made a cottage industry out of reformwhile “trying to distract attention from the mainissue — which is Israeli colonization.

“It’s easier for the Canadian government, and theEuropean Union and the United States to say, ‘we needPalestinian reform, and we need capacity building, andwe need state building, and we need to sendconsultants to help the Palestinians learn this andthat, and look how busy we are holding seminars on afree press and democracy,’” says Abunimah. “It’s a loteasier for Western politicians to do that, than it isto take Israel to the United Nations and imposesanctions on it.”

Even elections themselves, he’s quick to stress, canbe deceptive, as they leave the impression that the PAis a real government, with real power.

“The legislative council which was elected has nopower. Israel governs the Occupied Territories, notthe PA.”

As for Hamas itself, it’s not clear what they’ll do.Despite having won 76 of the 132 seats in thePalestinian Legislative Council, they’ve indicated adesire to form a national unity front with otherparties, but it’s not certain whether Fatah will joinsuch a coalition.

“It’s not like Canada, where there’s a civil serviceand a government, and the government changes and thecivil service remains,” says Abunimah. “It’s much moremessy than that. There’s a question as to whetherthose who control the various Palestinian securityservices will relinquish power. If they don’t, thatwill mean a confrontation, and Hamas has never reallybeen interested in escalating internal confrontation.”

An advocate of non-violence, Abunimah says he wants tosee Palestinian leaders follow in the footsteps ofgrassroots activists and mobilize ordinaryPalestinians in a large-scale, non-violent campaignagainst the occupation, something he doesn’t rule outeven with Hamas in charge.

“I think that could be a very good route for them,” hesays. “The PA [under Fatah] was not interested in thatbecause they didn’t see themselves as a resistancemovement, they saw themselves as a government. BecauseHamas see themselves as a resistance movement, theywill certainly be thinking about how they can maintainresistance in a way that maintains legitimacy.”

The U.S. and the EU are talking about cutting off aid tothe Palestinians, and Israel has said it won’t dealwith a PA that includes Hamas members. Even manyPalestinians are concerned, fearing that Hamas’victory will fundamentally alter the character of thePalestinian national movement, which has traditionallybeen a secular one. Abunimah, though, sounds acautiously optimistic note.

“I don’t think that Palestinians in general want tolive in an Islamic state,” he says. “[People supportHamas] because it is the Islamist groups who haveexpressed the desire for resistance.

“I’m not in favour of religious politics in general,whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, but Hamas has notexpressed any intention to do away with the democraticprocess,” concludes Abunimah. “They’ve agreed to abideby the rules of the game, and they should be held tothat.”