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Hamas’s victory in the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections showed the Palestinian nationalist movement’s collapse. Fatah and the Nationalists outlived their usefulness. They were responsible for 40 years of failure, ending with their inability to govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip or to negotiate a compromise peace agreement with Israel. In 2000, Arafat rejected a good offer: instead, he led the Palestinians to five years of disastrous war. Maximal demands, dictatorial methods and terrorist means are accepted by both Fatah and Hamas as well as the majority of Palestinians. In judging Fatah, Palestinians asked: if it could not obtain a State, why should we support it? If its ideology and strategy were basically identical to Hamas, why not back the Islamists?Barry Rubin, Director of Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) (Herzliya, Israël, Université interdisciplinaire), manages the French and British version of the Middle East Review of International Affairs. His last book is untitled The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (New York, Wiley, 2005).