Though Abu Mazen needs a loyal security force to disarm the militants and maintain a cease-fire, a physical approach to confronting Palestine's militant factions (the Islamists, mainly Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a militant offshoot of Fatah) will fail without a political approach. The Palestinian Authority must establish itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In the past, Hamas could easily present itself as an alternative to the P.A., because as Shikaki points out, the P.A. excluded Hamas from the political process by manipulating the electoral system.

"That's what we did in 1996," he said. "Hamas decided to pull out anyway, but even if they had run, they had no chance because we created a majority system that excluded everyone but Fatah." Today, 77 percent of the Legislative Council members are Fatah.

Shikaki continued, "When you follow a policy of exclusion, people take the battle out of the political system and into the streets." For this reason, he notes, Fatah was unwise to persuade Marwan Barghouti (the militant Fatah activist serving five life sentences in Israeli prison) to pull out of the presidential race. If Abu Mazen had run against Barghouti and won, it would have sent a clear message: Fatah chooses nonviolence. He did not run, so the issue of whether factions of Fatah still maintain violence as a viable tool remains unresolved.

Where Hamas is concerned, Abu Mazen will be unable to win back the hearts and minds of the people unless he moves the organization out of the streets and into the political arena. Hamas pulled out of the last Legislative Council elections in 1996 partly due to Fatah's efforts to exclude its opponents but mostly because Hamas refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Oslo process, which gave Palestinians some control over areas of the West Bank but ultimately failed to create a Palestinian state, stop Israeli settlement building, or even improve Palestinians' lives. It was Oslo's failure and four years of intifada that pushed the public mind toward Hamas, but Shikaki's public opinion polls show that 80 percent of Palestinians want a mutual cessation of violence. Seventy-one percent of the people who elected Hamas in the local elections are calling for an immediate return to negotiations. The public has grown tired, but so has Hamas. Israel assassinations and arrests have decimated their military leadership -- Shikaki says it is defunct in the West Bank. Finally, I have heard whispers from Palestinians and others that Hamas is eager for diplomatic relations with Israel and the United States. Suicide terror will bring them no legitimacy with either party.

Hamas has not definitively sworn off violence. Ala'a Rimawi, a West Bank Hamas activist, was clear on this point. "Hamas will stop the violence only if the Israelis cease their assassinations, dismantle the settlements, and make steps to leave the occupied territories. If not, the situation will return." But Rimawi was clear on another point as well: "It is the reality that Israelis have many parts of our land, so [Palestinians] cannot talk about the '48 lands [captured by Israel after its war of independence]. We can only talk about '67." It's no longer about what Hamas wants to do, Rimawi said, but what Hamas cando.

Neither of these opinions are new to Hamas' mainstream. Although the Western media seems not to realize this, or if it does, it fails to report it, a large gap has always existed between the ideals of their charter (which calls for an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine) and their practical intentions. A year and a half ago I spoke with Ghazi Hamad, editor of the Hamas-affiliated newspaper al-Risalah. The paper is based in Gaza, Hamas' stronghold and, according to Hamad, reflects mainstream Hamas opinion.

"For a long time we have accepted a state within the 1967 borders," Hamad explained. "But in our literature and in our education we say '48." The reason for this discrepancy, Hamad said, was Hamas' belief that Israel would never give Palestinians a state. Hamas would cease its call for the '48 lands only when Israel fulfilled the Palestinian right to statehood.

The occupation presents an ideological threat to the Palestinians as well as a physical one. Most believe, with reason, that Sharon has long desired to undermine the Palestinian national movement, to snub out their national identity and, therefore, their will to fight for statehood. It is in response to this, as much as to the checkpoints and tanks, that every Palestinian home has a map of historic Palestine with Al Quds (Arabic for Jerusalem), Yaffa and Nablus. Tel Aviv doesn't appear on a single one. Palestinians express their support for a state within 1967 borders even while sitting directly below such maps. Many also understand that after the creation of a Palestinian state, the majority of refugees expelled in 1948 and 1967 will be unable to return to their homes, now located within Israel; still, they entertain at least the hope of return. And as long as Israel categorically denies the principle of the refugees' right to return, Palestinians will continue to express this hope in the form of a definitive bottom line.

Abu Mazen has expressed a willingness to compromise on the right of return in the past. In 1999, he offered the U.S. a proposal for a final deal that required Israel to accept the principle of recognition, without demanding that all of the Palestinians in the diaspora be allowed to return to their homes. It is far too early to ask whether Palestinians would follow Abu Mazen down the road to such a deal concerning the refugees -- or any final-status solution. His concerns, such as the upcoming PLC elections, are more immediate.

Hamas' desire to run in these elections next month is a sign of the organization's growing pragmatism. According to Rimawi, many people within Hamas believe the Palestinian Authority is committed to accepting Hamas as a legitimate political partner. "The Palestinian Authority has a new vision of Hamas," he told me. "Not a small group but a significant partner."

I asked Rimawi what will happen to Hamas' policy of armed resistance -- something quite fundamental to the organization's identity -- once it enters the political realm.

"If you are in the government and you decide to have resistance, you will not manage to do it," Rimawi said. "Maybe you can have resistance, but then you can't have the government."

This point contradicted Rimawi's earlier statement that Hamas would reserve the right to violently oppose Israel. Could Palestine become like Northern Ireland, where Sinn Fein and the IRA operate simultaneously, or like Lebanon, where the militant Hezbollah is also represented in Parliament? Pollster Khalil Shikaki did not think so.

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