From the very first day after Hamas won the legislative elections in early 2006, the decision-making circles of some neighboring countries feared that an "Islamic emirate,” as they called it, would be established on Palestinian lands.
Subsequent events revealed that Hamas did not establish an Islamic emirate in Palestine, nor did it enforce Shariah law either regionally or internally, out of a desire not to draw, at that particular stage, the ire of factions hostile to it. But by so doing, Hamas provoked the anger of extremist Islamic movements, which believed this inaction belittled their desire to impose a long-lost religious obligation.