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With lawlessness on the rise, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy and the Islamist Hamas movement steadily gaining popularity, the coming election of the 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council is increasingly looking like a make-or-break moment for Palestinians and their hopes of eventually having an independent, functional state.
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It's a state of affairs that Ms. Abu Zneid blames largely on her own party. Fatah, she says, was monolithic and corrupt under Yasser Arafat, and has proven weak and bitterly divided under Mahmoud Abbas. Much of the recent inter-Palestinian violence that has wracked the West Bank and especially the Gaza Strip has been instigated by Fatah-affiliated gunmen over which Mr. Abbas no longer exerts control, she added.
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Some polls now suggest that Hamas might take more than a third of the vote, and Ms. Abu Zneid says she expects Hamas could win as many as 70 seats, enough to form a majority in the PLC. Though she worries about a rollback in women's rights if that happens, she's not sure that a Hamas victory would be an entirely bad thing since it would finally introduce a batch of new, uncorrupted faces to Palestinian politics.
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"If Hamas wins, there would be change and there would be reform," said Abu Mohammed, a 30-year-old pharmacist in Ramallah, a liberal-minded West Bank town that has long been a Fatah stronghold. He said he hadn't yet decided how to vote, but was considering voting for the Islamists just to "spite" Fatah. "They
must be better than what we have now."
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