Palestinians' Risky Elections

WITH LEGISLATIVE elections due Wednesday, the Palestinian territories are approaching a state of anarchy. Armed gangs roam the Gaza Strip -- taking foreign hostages, firing rockets at Israel, attacking government offices and occasionally each other -- all without serious impediment by official security forces. Economic activity is choked by the continuing violence and Israeli border controls. The Palestinian Authority itself is bankrupt, its international aid suspended because of its inability to control its own payroll. The balloting itself may provoke considerable violence by gunmen who fear losing their funding.

That the election is nevertheless likely to go forward, with the support of both Israel and the Bush administration, reflects the calculation that a suspension might cause even greater chaos. The voting's greatest beneficiary is likely to be the Islamic movement Hamas, which is participating in a Palestinian national election for the first time and expects to win control of at least a third of the legislature. If denied that chance to gain power, Hamas would likely return to open war against Israel and maybe against the Palestinian Authority. The hope offered by the election is that it will lead the Islamic movement further down a political path that could eventually lead to its disarmament.

Hamas's prospective success has less to do with its fundamentalist platform -- which it has substantially moderated for the sake of the campaign -- than with voters' disgust with the ruling Fatah movement. Riddled with rivalries and weighed down by the corrupt clique of leaders favored by Yasser Arafat, Fatah has been unable to reform itself. Voters rightly blame its undisciplined militias, often little more than local bands of armed thugs, for much of the violence in Gaza. Though he embraces all the right principles, President Mahmoud Abbas has proved utterly incapable of imposing order even on his own movement.

By contrast, Hamas's military wing is disciplined; it has maintained a cease-fire with Israel for nearly a year. Its leaders emphasize their plans to fight corruption and provide better education and health care to a much-deprived population.

Mr. Abbas and other Palestinian moderates hope that once its elected representatives take seats in the legislature and possibly the cabinet, Hamas will choose to extend its cease-fire and allow peace negotiations to go forward. That is certainly what Palestinians want: A recent poll showed that 65 percent want the truce to continue and nearly 80 percent want negotiations to resume. Israel's acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, offered the prospect of renewed talks if the Palestinian Authority disarmed militants after the elections, but virtually no one in Israel expects that will happen. On the contrary, Israeli security authorities are bracing for a new wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks between now and Israel's upcoming elections in late March. Hamas insists it will not disarm, though some leaders speak of integrating its fighters into a unified Palestinian security force.

Having prescribed democracy as an essential condition for a Palestinian state, the Bush administration can hardly stand in the way of electoral participation by a movement that represents a large fraction of Palestinians. It must hope that Hamas eventually will embrace democracy as the sole means of advancing its agenda, rather than as a mere tool to prevent its own disarmament or any Palestinian concessions to Israel, and that it will feel obliged to moderate its tactics and agenda while serving in government. Whether or not that happens, a Palestinian Authority backed by Hamas may be able to restore a semblance of order to Gaza. In the dismal present circumstances, that would be a step forward.