In February and March 1996, Hamas helped bring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power in Israel. The suicide bombs that took the lives of 59 Israelis in Jerusalem buses and at Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Center dramatically shifted Israeli public support from former President Shimon Peres to Netanyahu in that year's election. Israel, as I witnessed firsthand, was in possession of conclusive evidence proving that the orders for the suicide attacks arrived from the Iranian Embassy in Beirut and were delivered to Hamas terrorists. Hamas' intention was to sabotage the Oslo peace process. A political compromise leading to a two-state solution was the last thing Hamas believed would serve their interests and their ultimate goal of taking over Palestine and dispersing its fundamentalist religious ideology.
Hamas will probably espouse the same interests today — preventing a two-state solution compromise in case a moderate government comes to power in Israel. The extremists on both sides share the same interests. Fatah is aware of that danger, yet it is pressured by Palestinian public opinion to abort security cooperation with Israel. According to the analysis of a senior Fatah official in Hebron, President Mahmoud Abbas seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, preventing Palestinian terror is a major Fatah interest at this point in time. On the other, this cooperation is viewed by West Bank public opinion as surrendering to Israeli occupation and settlement policies.