The New York Times · New York, New York · 6 November 1991

CP-1991-041

Gaza Voting Favors Arab Moderates

By Clyde Haberman

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Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM, Nov. 5 — Results from a local election in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip suggested today that Palestinians have begun to swing away from hard-line Islamic fundamentalists to favor relative moderates who support the Middle East peace process.

Voting on Monday for the regional Chamber of Commerce, the first election of its kind in Gaza since 1964, ended with mainstream supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization winning a surprising 13 of the 16 seats at stake. The fundamentalist Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, captured only two seats, while an independent candidate won the remaining one.

Elections have only recently begun to be held in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after 24 years of Israeli occupation, and so they may be imperfect guides, at best, to the popular mood. Nevertheless, the results made public today were widely interpreted as a pro-peace message from the streets.

The triumphant mainstream Fatah faction of the P.L.O. firmly supported the conference that just ended in Madrid while Hamas, which had been presumed to be growing fast in Gaza, joined two Marxist P.L.O. factions in bitterly opposing Palestinian participation in the talks.

‘A Real Shock’ A Hamas leader and a losing candidate in Gaza City, Ibrahim al-Yazouri, acknowledged that the outcome was “a real shock.” Aoni Hasham, a furniture store owner in Gaza City, was one of many merchants who said he had rejected Hamas principally because “it did not offer an alternative to the peace process.”

Crowded, poor and desperate Gaza has been torn to a greater degree than the West Bank by the P.L.O. decision to endorse the Madrid conference. Hamas calls the peace process a sellout of the Palestinian dream of an independent state, while Fatah argues that it is time to become more practical and to settle for attainable goals.

In that sense, the election results “are a message from the Palestinian streets to the peace conference,” said Mohammed al-Kitwah, one of the 13 victorious Fatah candidates.

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