With the apparent overwhelming victory of the Islamist Hamas party in Wednesday's poll, the era of dominance of Palestinian politics by the Fatah faction -- founded by late PLO leader Yasser Arafat -- appears to be over.

Results released on Thursday evening indicate that Hamas won 76 seats in the 132-seat parliament, meaning the radical group now has an absolute majority. The Fatah faction got 43 seats according to the election commission.

The political earthquake has sent shockwaves throughout the Middle East and beyond. Israel and other countries with a stake in the peace process are now forced to adjust to the reality of having an organization that is labeled as a terrorist group by both the United States and the European Union as the Palestinians' democratically elected representatives. While acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert convened his cabinet for an emergency meeting, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Hamas to renounce violence and accept Israel's right to exist.

"You cannot have one foot in politics and another in terror," Rice said speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland by video. "Anyone who wants to govern and do so with the support of the international community has got to be committed to a two-state solution."

That call to lay down arms was echoed by government leaders throughout Europe. The poll's result will likely frustrate the efforts of President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate with Israel. Under Palestinian law, the biggest party in parliament can veto the president's choice of a prime minister, essentially allowing Hamas to form the next cabinet.

A political autopsy

So how did this happen?

Palestinians voted in droves for Hamas because they hope the party can do what the Fatah-led government under Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia (who resigned Thursday) failed to: clean up Yasser Arafat's legacy of corruption. Foreign policy considerations played little role in the election. Even the threat of the international community cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas were to win failed to sway voters. In the end, they had one thing in mind: punishing Fatah and putting a stop to the faction's long history of corruption.

The reasons are many. In the eyes of most Palestinian voters there is no Middle East peace process at the moment worth saving. The last talks were held a year ago, and it's not as though the current Fatah government is actively negotiating with the Israelis. That goes a long way towards explaining why voters might have been willing to accept Hamas's radical position against Israel -- they figured it was more important to improve life within the Palestinian Authority than to return to the peace process in the immediate future.

While the Americans and Europeans may shun Hamas, the majority of Palestinians have a very different view. Many here focus on the softer side of the group -- the Hamas that, since its founding in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, has sought to provide a social safety net for many impoverished Palestinians. The militant Hamas may be responsible for terrorist attacks in Israel, but it's political arm runs daycare centers, hospitals, youth clubs, schools and soup kitchens. For years now, Palestinian pollsters have observed a single, telling trend: The majority of Palestinians believe that both negotiations with Israel and armed actions against Israel together are the best way to achieve their political goal of creating an independent Palestinian state.

This mentality has been perfectly cemented in the two major democratic events that have happened in the Palestinian Authority since Arafat's death in November 2004. One year ago, the Palestinians voted with a two-thirds majority for President Mahmoud Abbas, who was seen internationally as the best opportunity for getting peace talks with Israel back on track. A year later, Palestinians are giving Hamas a major mandate in parliament and, possibly, within Abbas's cabinet. In other words, it's not just Hamas that's militant -- it's also the Palestinian population. If the party were to completely abandon its armed struggle in the face of the Israeli occupation, Palestinians would be outraged.

Some Hamas leaders are already signalling that rather than running the government on their own, they would prefer to create a national unity government that would include representatives of all Palestinian parties. Otherwise, it would prefer to govern together with the Fatah Party.

However, a Hamas-led parliament could have dreadful consequences -- both within and outside the Palestinian-controlled regions, unless, of course, Hamas renounces violence and abandons its policy of destroying Israel. Hamas has expressed no intention of doing so -- at least not yet. But one shouldn't forget that Fatah was also a militant organization for decades and Arafat and Abbas only succeeded in transforming it into the Fatah of today in the 1980s.

Is it possible Hamas could follow that model? And how radical does Hamas still remain today? Should one differentiate between the super radical terrorists of the Islamic Jihad movement from the terrorist light of Hamas? After all, Hamas has been the one group that has maintained an August 2004 cease-fire with Israel. It hasn't claimed responsibility for a single suicide attack since agreeing to the cease-fire. But it has also been contradictory -- its suicide bombers may be staying at home, but Hamas is still responsible for attacks against Israel with its arsenal of homemade Kassam missiles.

Waking up in Hamastan?

It will likely take Hamas months and maybe even years to fully develop new positions more suited to the political reality dictated by the latest election. If the group is undergoing a process of moderation, as some observers suggest, it can still hardly pitch its thoroughly anti-Israel charter overnight. But that might be necessary for it to take part in a Palestinian government. Just by participating in the elections, Hamas has quietly admitted that it is willing to further its struggle at the ballot box instead of with guns or explosives.