In Sign of Palestinians’ Mood, Hamas Wins Vote at a West Bank University
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Version 0 of 1. BIRZEIT, West Bank — Lina Halsa certainly made a splash at the student rally for the Islamist Hamas movement here at Birzeit University last month. Wearing a sleeveless top, tight jeans, and with her hair in a ponytail, Ms. Halsa’s attire was revealing even by the standards of this liberal, secular campus. But it was downright scandalous according to Hamas norms. Yet, Ms. Halsa was the very image of Hamas success on the campus, where the Islamist party beat out the more moderate Fatah faction in student elections. A photograph of her waving the faction’s signature green banner rocketed around social media, followed by a video in which she explained that she voted Hamas in part because her clothing “shows how much they are able to embrace other people.” A headline in the Pan-Arab daily Al Hayat trumpeted: “A Blonde Turns Birzeit Green.” The April 22 election was about far more than clothing, of course. Student elections are seen as an important benchmark of the Palestinian political mood, particularly since there has been no national balloting since Hamas won the legislative contests in 2006, and president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, is starting the 11th year of what was to be a five-year term. The nod to Hamas was broadly interpreted as another indication of just how unpopular President Abbas and his government have become. “We lost big,” Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Mr. Abbas, said of Birzeit at a briefing with international journalists. “I cannot give you a simple reason for it, but the Palestinian mood,” he added, “my house feels suffocated.” At two other West Bank campuses where Hamas participates — Hebron University and An-Najah University in Nablus — student elections were effectively canceled this spring after repeated delays, causing an uproar. An-Najah officials said elections were postponed in November because of shouting matches on campus and attacks on social media, then canceled in April because Fatah planned a party for graduates and an end-of-year shopping festival. At Hebron University, Sami Adwan, the academic vice president, said the planned vote in March was put off because the student assembly failed to hold meetings and report on its activities as required. Some students suspect another motivation: “They didn’t want to have elections because they anticipated a scandal,” Asem Ishtaya, 21, a Hamas-affiliated student at An-Najah, said of campus administrators. “This is the last patch of democracy in the West Bank. It’s small but it’s important.” At Birzeit, students said they voted based on who would deal with the pressing issue of being allowed to pay tuition in installments and on whether they found Fatah’s diplomatic approach or Hamas’s militant one more promising for Palestinian statehood. Hamas candidates continued to ride a wave of admiration over the war with Israel in the Gaza Strip last summer, and benefited from growing discontent against Mr. Abbas, who is also the head of Fatah. “Fatah didn’t fight in Gaza, Hamas fought in Gaza,” explained Suhaila, a 20-year-old English literature major who spoke on the condition that her last name not be published for fear of retribution amid postelection arrests of Hamas campus activists. “Nobody believes in negotiations,” said another female student, who also asked for anonymity for the fear of government retaliation. “The president has abandoned us, and they take all the money that comes from abroad and distribute it among themselves.” Hamas, which does not tolerate dissent in Gaza, has not allowed campus elections there since it took control of the territory in 2007 — a point that its student activists in the West Bank shied away from discussing. Of the West Bank’s nine major Palestinian universities, two had elections this year that included Hamas on the ballot: Polytechnic in Hebron, where the Islamist movement tied with Fatah, each winning 15 seats, and Birzeit, where Hamas won 26 of 51 seats to Fatah’s 19. In the days after the surprising results, two dozen Hamas activists from West Bank campuses were detained by Palestinian Authority security forces, according to Human Rights Watch, citing Addameer, a Palestinian prisoner-rights group. Gen. Adnan Damiri, a spokesman for the security service, said the detentions had nothing to do with political affiliations, though a Hamas student at Birzeit said the activists had been interrogated about how and why they won. Grant Rumley of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is frequently critical of Mr. Abbas, said the detentions had “the characteristics of state-sponsored involvement in student elections.” Yet, he noted, at least Mr. Abbas allowed some form of student elections to occur. Birzeit, on a pine-studded hill a short drive from the Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in Ramallah, has regularly held student elections since the 1970s, and has long been a matter of pride for Fatah because it is close to its power base. It is a place where as many women wore blowout hair styles as head scarves on a recent day, and students of both genders openly mixed and smoked, a scene offensive to conservative Palestinian sensibilities. Hamas last won Birzeit elections in 2007, part of a juggernaut after the movement’s upset victory in parliamentary elections. In the years since, with a bitter Hamas-Fatah schism persisting despite repeated reconciliation pacts, the annual Birzeit balloting has taken on added significance. “The split between Fatah and Hamas, and the decision of Fatah and Hamas to cancel the idea of national elections is a setback for the democratic process,” said Ghassan Khatib, vice president of Birzeit and a former Palestinian Authority spokesman. Student “elections are important as an indication,” he added, “because simply there is no other way.” Students said Hamas ran an excellent campaign, marketing themselves as new after years of Fatah domination of the student council and focusing on issues that really mattered to students. They used social media to post updates and interviews with students. They put out pamphlets promising, for example, to end the practice of giving preferential treatment in class selection to students who pay their tuition bills upfront. Fatah leaders, meanwhile, confident of an easy victory, were already fighting over council positions, alienating some students. “It was a disaster,” said one Fatah activist, insisting on anonymity to criticize his party’s effort. Referring to first-year students, he added, “We even lost the Smurfs to Hamas!” Ms. Halsa’s audacious entry to the Hamas rally was a turning point: Fatah loyalists shamed her for her attire, while Hamas students paid her a solidarity visit. Her video pledging her vote to Hamas was viewed 62,000 times. “They were amazing,” said Ruba, a 21-year-old media major who did not vote for Hamas but was impressed. “Their campaign speeches, how they played with that girl, that blonde. They made a point: Hamas in Gaza is different from Hamas in the West Bank. They played it right.” |