By Kathleen Kern

When Christian Peacemaker Teams first considered working in Hebron, many Israelis and Palestinian Christians told us that Hebron was full of dangerous Islamic fundamentalists.

What I found in Hebron were people very much like the Christian fundamentalists I grew up among in northwest Ohio. Most were generous and kind, earnestly wishing to save people from suffering eternal torment in hell. They were also dogmatic and not inclined to analyze why they believed what they believed.

In Hebron, these people tended to support Hamas, because Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority he headed were more secular and more corrupt.

Arafat’s cronies dispensed jobs and money to friends and prominent figures with whom they wished to curry favor. They used donations intended to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians to fund lavish lifestyles. Hamas advocated for a clean government, with honest politicians who held themselves accountable to God. While most Hamas supporters viewed the state of Israel as illegitimate, many with whom I spoke did not approve of attacks on Israeli civilians.

While Palestinian Christian and Muslim colleagues of CPT have been fearing the ascendance of Islamic groups, they are not giving up hope.

Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor, wrote after the recent Hamas election sweep: “We [Palestinian Christians] are called not to be afraid; neither to panic nor to withdraw from the public sphere. We are called not to feel as if we are just spectators, but rather to participate with many in this quest for a new Palestinian identity. We are called to replace old and ineffective structures by engaging in this process of building a new political system that is modern, meaningful and accountable. . . . It is at times like these that we are most needed.”

Israeli commentators have compared Hamas’ rise to power with that of the Likud — an Israeli party with whom right-wing religious Israelis affiliate.

The Likud had its roots in the Jewish terror cells that operated in the 1930s and ’40s. The party won the 1977 election, in part because many Israelis were fed up with members of the Labor Party’s old-boys network dispensing jobs and opportunities to other Labor Party members. And it was the Likud that pulled Israeli settlements out of Sinai.

Even given these expressions of pallid optimism, I am anxious about Hamas coming to power in the same way that I would have been anxious if Pat Robertson had won the 1988 U.S. presidential election. I believe that once elected, Robertson would have tried to impose his brand of Christian fundamentalism on non-Christian Americans as well as on Christians who think Jesus meant what he said about loving enemies.

However, I understand why Hamas was elected when I look through Palestinian eyes at their current situation in the Occupied Territories. The economy is destroyed and many are going hungry. Palestinians cannot move freely within the West Bank and Gaza, let alone get to the outside world. Bored and racist Israeli soldiers amuse themselves by humiliating them at checkpoints every day.

Israeli settlers and the military attack, injure and kill Palestinian men, women and children with near impunity. Israeli settlements and the separation/annexation wall are expanding at a ferocious rate, gobbling up Palestinian land and stripping Palestinian families of their homes and livelihoods. The Israeli military has destroyed thousands of Palestinian dwellings for “security” reasons.

These realities have been part of Palestinian life since the Oslo accords were signed in 1993. Palestinians are desperate for a change in the status quo that impoverishes, imprisons, dispossesses and humiliates them. Any change at all.