Who is the real Hamas?

My first question was whether Hamas had been surprised by the extent of its victory. Ramahi said that Hamas had expected its "Change and Reform" list to get around 50 percent of the new PLC's seats, but "getting 60 percent was a surprise!"

I asked how Hamas now planned to proceed with its mandate to run the Palestinians' affairs. He told me Hamas had started a dialogue with all other factions represented in the PLC with a view to establishing a government of national unity. He said that Islamic Jihad was the only faction that had refused point-blank to join such a government, "though they said they wouldn't be an obstacle to our forming it. All the others are still in dialogue with us." He said that in Hamas' view, the first thing to establish was the common program on which the national unity government would be based -- and only after that would come discussion of division of the various portfolios.

In fact, under the Palestinian Basic Law that was adopted in 2002, Hamas has no need whatsoever for a coalition government, since the confirmation of a prime minister and government and the passage of most daily legislation can be achieved with a simple majority. Only amendments to the Basic Law require a two-thirds majority -- and by attracting just 15 allies from non-Hamas parties, which is quite possible, Hamas could even do this. But evidently Hamas prefers to bring allies from other parties, especially Fatah, into the government -- whether to share the political risk, or to split the badly wounded Fatah down the middle, is not clear. Ramahi told me the coalition talks were "going positively. We're hopeful that reaching a compromise is possible."

I had earlier heard an intriguing report that Hamas might be prepared to let President Abbas handle the P.A.'s foreign affairs, and I asked Ramahi if that was correct. He clarified for me that it was not Mahmoud Abbas in his capacity as president of the P.A. to whom the Hamas leaders were considering handing the foreign affairs portfolio, but rather Mahmoud Abbas as president of the PLO.

He explained, "When the Oslo Accords were concluded, it was originally agreed there that the Palestinian Authority would not handle foreign affairs. Remember that the Oslo Accords were concluded between Israel and the PLO. So the arrangement at that point was that the PLO would continue to handle negotiation affairs and the P.A. would handle only domestic affairs. But then Fatah reversed that. We're suggesting a return to the original idea. And that fits in with an initiative from [the PLO's foreign-affairs chief] Farouq Qaddoumi."

Ramahi said that as far as he knew there were differences inside Fatah, which dominates the PLO, over how to respond. He said his information was that Qaddoumi, Abbas, and Fatah's chief whip in the PLC, Azzam Ahmed, were all inclined to accept the Hamas proposal, while previous P.A. chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and security bosses Mohamed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub all favored rejecting it.

(Shortly after I talked with Ramahi, Abbas left Ramallah on a trip to Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. This trip would allow him to confer further with Qaddoumi and other figures in the PLO's exile wing -- many of whom have been strongly opposed to his negotiating stance with Israel in the past.)

I asked Ramahi about the very important portfolio of security affairs. How would these be handled under the new government?

"The Palestinian law says there are two parts of our security apparatus," he replied. "Some bodies report to the president, like the intelligence agency and the Presidential Security. Others, like the police and the Preventive Security (amn wiqa'i), should be under the Ministry of the Interior.

"For our internal security problems, we certainly need to reach a strong agreement. Right now there are so many separate little bodies, some of which I'm sorry to say seem to act more like mafias."

How about the proposal to fold Hamas' own militia, the Izzeddine Qassam Brigades, into the government's security forces?

Here, he was adamant. "No. The Qassam Brigades should not be part of the authority's police forces, because the Qassam Brigades need to continue fighting the occupation. The demand to dismantle the Qassam Brigades is not acceptable. International law gives us the right to fight occupation."

I asked about the tahdi'eh (truce) with Israel that Hamas has stuck to -- with one exception -- since March of last year. The tahdi'eh was the result of an agreement that all the major Palestinian organizations, though notably not some of the smaller component factions of Fatah, had agreed to among themselves during intensive meetings in Cairo. Israel never reciprocated the initiative, in either word or deed.

Ramahi said, "Until now, we have respected the tahdi'eh. Abu Mazen has asked for internal dialogue on continuing it. So we expect there would be a joint decision on this after we have formed the government."

As we spoke, the Palestinian areas were coming to the end of a five-day period in which the Israeli forces had killed some eight to 10 Palestinians, some of them armed, some not armed. Ramahi warned, "If the Israelis continue their present aggressions we'll find it hard to restrain some of our youngsters. We are certainly worried that the Israelis might launch a further escalation as their election campaign progresses."

I asked how he would characterize Hamas' vision of the long-term relationship between Israel and Palestine. He replied, "We have said clearly that Israel is a state that exists and is recognized by many countries in the world. But the side that needs recognition is Palestine! And the Israelis should recognize our right to have our state in all the land occupied in 1967. After that it should be easy to reach agreement.

"They ask us to recognize Israel without telling us what borders they're talking about! First, let us discuss borders, and then we will discuss recognition."

What did Hamas plan to do about the fact that it is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the E.U.?

He almost shrugged. "The U.S. and E.U. need to resolve their own problem there. It's not our problem. We have said we're against terrorism. The Israelis didn't accept to stop killing civilians. For one year we haven't done any suicide bombings -- but the Israelis have continued to kill our civilians.

"You remember when they assassinated Saleh Shehadeh? They said afterwards that they had known there were 40 civilians in that house -- but they went ahead with dropping that big bomb, anyway.

"Yes, we'd like to have a reciprocal agreement to save the lives of all civilians.

"You know that of the 3,500 Palestinians killed in the last intifada, more than 2,000 were civilians? Yet the Israelis lost only 1,000 people in all -- between soldiers and civilians.

"Right now, regarding our relations with the U.S. and Europe, Hamas and the other Islamic groups here say they are ready to sit down with them to agree on the future. But they refuse to sit with us. But they should know: If they make us fail, they won't find anyone else at all to talk with. We are the moderates in the Islamic movement. We condemned the al-Qaida actions in the U.S. and London and Madrid. We could have acted outside the area of Palestine, but we never did. We're the only group here that never did kidnappings or other undisciplined attacks like that."

(In a piece in the Feb. 27 New Yorker, David Remnick quotes Aziz Dweik, the new PLC speaker who was too busy to see me, as saying, "Bin Laden is a fighter for the cause of Islam, and this man has his way of serving his God. He has offered the West a truce many times, saying that he will put down his arms if the West stops interfering in our affairs. We have no right to hate bin Laden. We respect him. Hiding this fact does not serve the truth.")

Next page: Dore Gold: "I take Hamas' ideology very seriously"