The Daily Star - - Hamas' triumph is a real opportunity

Three key points seem important about Hamas' victory. The first is that the election campaign was not a referendum on making war or peace with Israel. Hamas did not win because it promised to wipe out Israel. It won because it held out the promise of redressing some of the terrible imbalances and chaotic distortions that have come to define Palestinian domestic society in the past few years. These include corruption and incompetence in the Palestinian Authority governance system, lawlessness at the local level, and a humiliating inability to protect Palestinian communities' basic day-to-day ability to function because of the sustained onslaught of Israeli occupation policies. Hamas won because Palestinians think it can do a better job than Fatah in bringing order and self-respect to the business of daily life.