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Less about militancy, more about municipality

In Palestinian cities, Hamas officials are promoting reform ahead of this week's elections. But their success could spell the end of peace talks with Israel.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published January 22, 2006

	[Times photos: John Pendygraft]
	Mayor Ramadan Shatat, at a window overlooking Bidya, has gotten high marks from residents since taking office 13 months ago.
	Girls in Ramallah call out in support of Hamas during a rally for this week's elections. On the posters is Sheik Ahmad Yasin, a Hamas founder who was killed by Israeli soldiers in 2004.
	Mayor Ramadan Shatat greets about everyone he meets with a smile in Bidya. He listens to their problems and makes solving them a priority.
	Mayor Ramadan Shatat tells Hane Nabulsy, left, that he should pick up garbage left in front of a municipal clinic. When Nabulsy complains the garbage is not his, Shatat shrugs and says he should be a good citizen and pick it up anyway. Cleaning up Bidya has been one of Shatat's priorities as mayor.

BIDYA, West Bank - The mayor is perplexed.

His secretary has just presented him with two bills for tractor rentals. The first, $75 for one hour. The second, $225 for two hours.

Why were the tractors needed, the mayor wants to know. And why is the hourly rate on one so much higher than on the other?

"Is this Syrian time or Palestinian time?" he jokes. But he holds firm: no answers, no payment.

Such attention to detail is among the reasons Ramadan Shatat has become one of the most popular figures in this Palestinian town. Elected just over a year ago, the 33-year-old mayor has helped Bidya get its first ambulance, a new school, a well-equipped computer center and - to the joy of residents who still have to travel 30 miles to the nearest bank - an ATM.

Chief among his projects, though, has been reorganizing a municipal government once considered a corrupt, inefficient mess. He has revamped some city departments and added new ones, each marked with a neatly lettered sign in green - the color of Hamas, of which the mayor is a member.

To Israelis, Hamas is ruthless terrorist organization whose suicide bombings have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent people. To Palestinians, however, it is a widely admired social and political movement committed to improving the quality of life in the struggling West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A Hamas victory, many fear, could deliver a final blow to the already gasping peace process. Israel says it will not negotiate with any Palestinian government that includes Hamas unless the organization disarms, a condition its leaders reject.

But there is some evidence Hamas is growing more moderate as it becomes more political. Its campaign platform does not call for Israel's destruction - long a Hamas goal - and it has generally observed a truce while Palestinian Islamic Jihad continues its attacks, including one Thursday that wounded 30 in Tel Aviv.

If Hamas has a new face, it could well be that of Bidya's mayor.

Residents find him modest and affable, with a quick smile and easy banter. Despite his youth, they call him Sheik Ramadan out of respect for his religious credentials. He holds a master's in Islamic studies and was imam of a local mosque before his election.

In shirt, tie and sweater vest, the balding Shatat could also pass for an accountant. He often acts like one, questioning bills or jumping up from his desk to fish a financial report out of his briefcase. After his first six months in office, every household got a four-page newsletter showing exactly how the town was spending its money, down to the last Jordanian dinar and Israeli shekel.

"He's much better, much more qualified" than his predecessor, says Tayseer Al Deek, an engineer with World Vision, a U.S. humanitarian organization that has several projects in Bidya.

"If he keeps doing things the way he is doing now, he will be successful and help the people here. When I dealt with him I didn't feel it was Hamas, but someone who was very professional."

On a clear day, Bidyans can see the high-rises of Tel Aviv and the blue swath of the Mediterranean - tantalizingly close yet almost as hard to get to as the moon since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intensified in 2000. Unlike some nearby Palestinian cities, Bidya has never been known as a terrorist incubator, but its residents have suffered the consequences of terror attacks: Israeli checkpoints, barricades and road closures that make travel nearly impossible.

Before 2000, many of Bidya's 10,000 residents worked in Israel, or made money from Israelis who came here for cheap produce and car repairs. Now, the jobless rate is over 50 percent.

Though most Palestinians blame Israel for their economic crisis, they also fault their own officials for squandering huge sums through waste and corruption. In December 2004, Bidya voters took out their frustration on then-mayor Jameel Daoud Mohammed, a member of Yasser Arafat's secular Fatah Party.

A wealthy olive exporter with a fourth-grade education, the portly Mohammed was appointed mayor after the town incorporated in the early '90s. In this highly religious community, he angered locals when he proposed knocking down a mosque to make way for a new municipal building.

Residents also complained about the casual approach to governance.

"Nothing was organized," says Omar Daas, owner of a mobile phone store. "We didn't have any administration, no departments, nobody to speak with you. The mayor used to run everything by himself."

As unemployment soared, others thought the well-heeled Mohammed showed little sympathy for those less fortunate.

"He used to disconnect the electricity or send us to jail," says Rihab Alaqra, whose family ran up an unpaid power bill of 12,000 shekels - $3,000 - after her husband lost his job.

In the election, the 61-year-old Mohammed did so poorly he failed to place among the top 11 vote-getters. Shatat moved into the mayor's office, and says he was aghast at what he found.

"We came into a situation where there was cronyism and corruption - things were at a standstill. The main goal of the Islamic movement is to reform and change the daily life of the people. In so many aspects, the people need help - health, roads, education."

In Shatat's first month as mayor the town collected 400,000 shekels by letting residents pay overdue bills in installments. Some of the money was used to pave roads, add more garbage containers and hire an employee to combat the mosquito problem.

"People were suffering," the mayor says. "Last summer was the first time they could sleep at night."

To boost the professionalism of city staff, Shatat drew up job descriptions and based pay on education, experience and performance. The town began issuing monthly financial statements.

"Clean hands, open books" is the way he puts it.

Among Shatat's top priorities has been improving the school system. Before becoming mayor, he headed a committee that raised $32,000 - a huge sum in an area where most people live on less than $3.60 a day - to buy land for a girls school.

The old one was so small, "it was like a sardine can. If one of these girls fell down, everyone would fall over."

The new school, whose red and yellow facade stands out in a sea of dun-colored buildings, opened last fall.

The mayor is also trying to get Jerusalem's Open University to add a branch in Bidya, offering the entire top floor of city hall as an inducement. To reach the nearest campus, students now must travel 30 miles over frequently blocked roads.

"See," he says, waving a study he commissioned, "we show how we can save a lot of pain and suffering and at the same time there would be a lot of profit for the university."

Unlike the previous mayor, who quit promptly at 2 p.m., Shatat often works late into the day before heading home to his wife and three small children. Part of a well-to-do family, he takes only 700 shekels out of his 3,200 shekel monthly salary, giving the rest to needy citizens.

On a recent day, he left his office midafternoon to check on a current project - Bidya's first public park. When finished this spring, it will have a playground, restaurant, amphitheater and pond.

The town is donating the land. To pay for the improvements, Shatat got a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development - part of the same government that calls Hamas a terrorist organization.

"This is the contradiction," he says. "On the one side, they consider you a terrorist movement. On the other side, they find clean hands and flexibility and transparency. There is a part of the American population that understands the position of the Palestinian people and understands what the Islamic movement is trying to do."

During the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987 to 1993, Shatat spent three years in an Israeli prison for "resistance." He won't say why he was jailed, although the violence in that period was often confined to rock and bottle throwing.

Hamas' more recent use of suicide bombings was "not a willing choice," he maintains, but started only because Israel continued to occupy and oppress Palestinian territories. "You don't use this choice until you have no other choice."

Although Hamas is best known outside Palestinian areas for its brutal militancy, life inside Bidya's city hall proceeds much like that in any other small town - a constant parade of residents seeking building permits or help with a broken water pipe. Apart from the green lettering over the doorways, there are no obvious signs of Hamas - no flags, no propaganda, no campaign posters.

But when pressed for his views, Shatat echoes most of Hamas' demands. Creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. The right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. The removal of all Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

In a departure from the Hamas charter, though, Shatat says he accepts Israel's existence.

"The Jews have a right to live, the Palestinians have a right to live. Each nation has the right to its own state and independence."

Is Hamas really evolving? Or is the more moderate tone a ploy to woo Palestinian voters sick of conflict? An Israeli expert on Hamas doubts it will change - "then it wouldn't be Hamas" - but says the democratic process should be open to all.

"Islamists accuse Israel and the West - and rightly so - of hypocrisy for supporting democratization, but provided that Hamas does not win," says Rafael Israeli, a political scientist at Hebrew University.

"We saw that scenario unfold in Algeria in 1991. The result was that Islamists became more suspicious and hateful of the West. Do we need that?"

In Bidya, Shatat and Hamas have done so well that some former Fatah supporters say they will vote for Hamas candidates in this week's parliamentary elections.

"The people in Fatah were not suitable people," says Fadi Ibrahim, a 23-year-old computer programmer who works with a U.N. agency in Bidya. "They were not good, their morals were not good."

As for Shatat, he has no higher ambitions nor will he seek another four-year term as mayor. If the Palestinians are to build their own country and develop better leaders, he says, more should have the opportunity to enter politics.

Besides, he still has big goals at home. Bidya needs a hospital. A sewer system. Schools. And despite his efforts - including printing up bumper stickers that say "I don't throw garbage from my car" - the streets remain littered.

"What's this still doing here?" Shatat asks, pointing to a pile of scrap metal and trash junking up the area between a restaurant and the town's only clinic.

A restaurant employee mutters that the debris isn't his. The mayor is unmoved.

"Get rid of it," he orders, "or I'll send someone around."

Early the next morning, a city truck hauls off the metal. The employee sweeps up what's left.

"This," the mayor says, "is the way things should be done."

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 22, 2006, 01:03:12]