Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar speaks to the press during his visit to Al-Aela Al-Moqdasah Christian School in Gaza City on February 2, 2006. (Wesam Saleh, Maan News)

This article was originally published by The Dallas Morning News and is republished with the author's permission.

The overwhelming victory the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza handed to Hamas was not an endorsement of its ideology nor its ultimate aim of an Islamic state in all of former Palestine. Polls suggest that as few as 3 percent of Palestinians support that goal; a solid majority in the occupied territories still supports negotiations with Israel toward a two-state solution.

Rather, the vote represents a pragmatic assessment about which party is most likely to help Palestinians reach their basic goals of liberty, peace and prosperity.

How did Hamas, a religious party, gain the political high ground within a society with a long history of secular nationalism and a burning desire for democracy? Certainly the former ruling party Fatah's corruption, ineptitude and intergenerational strife contributed to its defeat. Hamas leaders, by contrast, are renowned for their integrity, commitment to the public good and efficiency. Their network of social services - hospitals, schools, youth camps - has rivaled those of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, created by the Oslo Accords.

Yet Fatah's electoral rebuke is more than a reaction to poor governance - a hallmark of the PA from the outset. Long before outsiders demanded reform, Palestinians themselves sought it. The Palestinian Legislative Council, for example, launched an audit of PA expenditures and drafted legislation ensuring an independent judiciary in the mid-'90s. Still, PA excesses were largely tolerated - including forcible repression of the Islamist opposition - as long as momentum was maintained toward independence and peace. It was only when hopes of this began to fade that Fatah's popular legitimacy began to wither.

In retrospect, Fatah sealed its fate by its total investment in the Oslo Accords and the so-called "peace process." Fatah leaders naively assumed that Israel had accepted the international consensus in support of "land for peace." That is, the Palestinians would gain independence in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, while Israel would achieve guarantees of security within its pre-1967 borders.

Yet Israel had never abandoned its plans for territorial expansion, as its concerted colonization of the West Bank concretely proved. This process continues today, with Israel's separation wall and the active expansion of Israeli settlements. All the while, the PA proved incapable of effectively resisting this process.

There is little question that the Hamas victory portends a period of tense uncertainty. For the short term at least, Israel will continue its unilateral course, arguing that it lacks a "partner for peace."

In fact, what it lost was a partner for surrender. The Palestinians have gained a government with spine - one they trust will be far less yielding of their fundamental rights. It is to the shame of the secular nationalist Palestinian movement that it was not the one to offer this alternative.

One day, Palestinians will have to wrestle with questions of what kind of polity they truly want, Islamic or other. For now, they have entrusted their future to Hamas, and the world will have to grapple with their democratic choice.

Withdrawing aid to the Palestinians will be counterproductive, rallying them around their elected leaders and freeing them to seek other patrons. Calmer heads will realize that a Palestinian government steadfastly representing the interests of its people is more likely to yield a just and durable peace than a subservient body utterly lacking the respect of its people.

George Bisharat is a professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and writes frequently on law and politics in the Middle East.