A multimillion-dollar reconstruction project, funded in large part by the Japanese government, has changed the face of what was Yasser Arafat's embattled Mukata headquarters complex in Ramallah.
Crumpled buildings have been cleared away. The once sandbag-protected entrance to the stairway leading up to Arafat's quarters is now pristine and easily accessible. Building work at what the sign individualistically calls the "Mousoleum of President Yasir Arafat complete with prayer hall" is in full swing, alongside the guarded area where the "rais" lies buried beneath a large Palestinian flag. Mahmoud Abbas's mustachioed portrait now gazes down from the archway leading to the prefab quarters of the security detachment. Half-a-dozen dark Mercedes are parked nearby.
Nidal Abu-Dahan, Abbas's bodyguard, marches briskly across the compound, a tall man in a hurry. I ask him how well Hamas will do in the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council on January 25, and he pauses for only two sentences in response.
"No one will vote for Hamas," is his first. "Only 25 percent," is his second.
At that rate of inflation, his third sentence, had he spared the moment to deliver it, might have put Hamas at 50 percent - which happens to be what Hamas officials themselves are predicting.
***
In mid-December's elections for the local council in Ramallah's adjacent municipality, El-Bireh, Hamas won nine of the 15 council seats.
Two went to independent candidates and Abbas's Fatah list won only four.
"It was a protest against Fatah corruption," says the flat-capped owner of a dry-goods store around the corner from the municipality building. "People are fed up with the mess."
You don't have to press hard for details. Over cups of bitter coffee, the grievances come pouring out. On a national level, people see top Fatah officials building themselves lavish homes and driving luxury cars. And on a local level, they see jobs being given to relatives and friends, unfairnesses in the awarding of building permits, dirty streets.
He doesn't volunteer whom he voted for, and I don't push him. He notes that only 6,000 locals voted in the El-Bireh elections, perhaps a quarter of the potential electorate. He says he doesn't know if people's despair over what he calls "interior issues" will translate into similar support for Hamas in the parliamentary vote. And he asserts that voters didn't opt for Hamas "out of religious affiliation."
But the bottom line, he says, is that Abbas's PA has lost the trust of ordinary Palestinians. "People think Hamas will do better, be fairer, than Fatah."
Another man in the store chimes in that "even Christians are voting for Hamas. People are saying, 'Things can't be any worse.' They hear the international community saying that 'if you elect Hamas, we'll cut off aid.' But it's the PA that was misusing the world aid. Why does the world insist that Mafia rule is the only leadership the Palestinians can have?
"Abbas promised to end anarchy and lawlessness," this man continues. "He won an election on that basis. But he didn't use the mandate. He tried to appease. And now he's paying ransoms to kidnappers, and people know that if you want to get a job you storm the Bethlehem municipal building."
How well does this man think Hamas will do in the parliamentary vote?
"Well, that depends," he says sardonically. "Remember that the PA security personnel are to vote two days before the rest of us, behind closed doors."
***
Um Muhamad saw first-hand for the past 12 years how the El-Bireh council was run.
Warmed by a small radiator, her toddler granddaughter rotating incessantly on an office chair at her side, she sits, as she has since the mid-1990s, at the reception desk in the municipal building, directing visitors and fielding calls.
"This city got heaps of foreign aid; it never reached the people," she says with the confidence born of having witnessed regime change. "Only a handful of people here benefited. They went on courses. They enjoyed the foreign travel. They took the commissions on everything they purchased for the council."
Muhamad, who wears a green sweater and trousers beneath a coat and has her head covered, says she's delighted that Hamas has come to power here, and hopes it replicates the success in two weeks' time. "They are straight," she proclaims of the new councillors. They don't care about materialism. They want to serve the people. They don't take commissions; they have a committee that oversees purchasing. They've met with every city employee, and asked us what problems we have. I told them I've been here for 12 years, don't have a computer, never got sent on a course. In the past, I was always told, 'You're over 40. You're useless.' These people told me, 'We'll take care of it all.'
"People are disgusted with the PA," she rushes on. "They were depositing millions of dollars in bank accounts abroad for themselves and their children. They didn't do anything for the people. My daughter [she has seven children] sent her CV to all the ministers after graduating university. She's very bright. But we're simple people, without connections. She didn't get a job."
Isn't she worried that, if Palestinians now vote for a parliament with a heavy Hamas presence, the world will withdraw aid because of Hamas's extremism, and ordinary people will suffer?
"If the world cuts funding, it will only strengthen Hamas," she pronounces with certainty. And then, unlike the man in the dry-goods store, she launches a religious defense of the Hamas ideology: Peace with Israel is "impossible," she says. "Our religion says the conflict will continue until the day of judgment. They took the land of Palestine and the people will never give up." It might help matters if Israel ended "the humiliations, the checkpoints, the walls, the killings. My mother-in-law is in Mokassed hospital [in east Jerusalem] and we can't visit her. Her children are in Jordan and can't come and see her. She'll die alone. This makes the people hate Israel."
