Q: How did Israel and the United States contribute to this outcome?

A: In a global sense, major Western powers, as well as Israel, have worked to counter secular Arab nationalism for decades. For a very long time that was seen as the primary threat to first British and French and later American interests. One of the ways they pursued their opposition to Arab nationalism was by strengthening, or at the very least ignoring the growth of, religious opposition groups. This led to the rise of many groups, often equipped with US money and/or training.

In Hamas' case, they certainly benefited from a general rise in religious militarism. But Israel also helped them by allowing the Islamic groups that preceded Hamas to flourish with relatively little harassment in the 70s and most of the 80s. Israel saw the religious groups opposing the secular nationalists, like the PLO, that Israel was more concerned with. They believed that allowing, and even encouraging Hamas to flower would create a thorn in the side of secular Palestinian nationalism, leading to infighting and blunting the Palestinians' ability to mount resistance. And for a time, that was what happened. But the rise of groups like Hamas was the inevitable result.

In more recent years, Israeli actions have consistently undermined support for Fatah, Yasir Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. In April, 2002, after a horrific attack in Netanya on Passover (carried out, it should be noted, by Hamas), Israel launched "Operation Defensive Shield". By the end of that offensive, the Palestinian infrastructure had been destroyed. There has only recently been an opportunity for the Palestinian Authority to start to rebuild that infrastructure. Yet Israel continued to insist that the PA clamp down on militants, despite their not having the military means or the political capital to do so. When the PA could not comply, Israel and the US would ridicule their leadership, refuse to negotiate and act unilaterally. Then, by building the wall, in defiance of international law, through the West Bank rather than along the Green Line and by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, Israel demonstrated the irrelevance, in their eyes, of Mahmoud Abbas, the PA and Fatah.

From the Palestinian point of view, things were just getting worse under Fatah's leadership and what warmth the US was showing Fatah only made the party look like quislings. Indeed, the leaking of news that the US was covertly funneling funds to Fatah to bolster their campaign just before the election was probably very damaging.