Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary vote
In a dramatic upset, officials from both the radical Islamic Hamas and the ruling Fatah party said Thursday that Hamas had won Wednesday's parliamentary elections, hours before preliminary official results were due.
Officials at Gaza City's Fatah headquarters, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted defeat at the hands of Hamas, while senior Fatah official Qaddourra Faris said openly he believed Hamas had won a majority of seats.
A series of Hamas leaders, including Ismail Hanya, Sami Abu Zuhri, and Musheer al-Masri claimed an "overwhelming victory" Thursday morning, with al-Masri telling Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that Hamas won 76 out of 132 seats in Wednesday's landmark elections. Fatah won 43 seats.
He said the figures were based on counts by Hamas representatives in local central election commissions.
He said Hamas had already begun talks with other factions and was interested in forming a coalition government.
The Palestinian Central Elections Commission postponed a news conference of preliminary official results originally scheduled for noon to 7 p.m. (1700 GMT), reportedly at the request of shocked Fatah leaders.
The turnaround came after exit polls published late Wednesday showed Fatah narrowly ahead of Hamas by about five mandates, already an emphatic debut for the Islamic fundamentalist movement, which took part in parliamentary elections for the first time.
Commentators spoke Thursday of a "revolution", as since the first- ever Palestinian legislative elections in 1996, Fatah had enjoyed an almost three-quarter majority in the Palestinian Legislative Elections, with 62 out of 88 seats.
Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, the association of Israeli victims of terrorism Almagor expressed its dismay over the apparent Hamas election victory.
"The Hamas victory proves to the Israeli people that those people who kill more of us are more successful," an association spokesman told the online newspaper ynet.
"(It is) a terrifying thought to provide the Palestinians with a self- administration which now quickly will become a reign of terror," the spokesman added, noting that Hamas had carried out numerous bloody suicide attacks since 1993 which had killed or wounded hundreds of Israelis.