Just when one thinks he/she had figured out the situation in the Middle East, it suddenly changes.

In just a few weeks, Sharon became comatose, the Palestinian streets went from chaos verging on anarchy to an unsettling calm and then the Islamic group Hamas, contesting elections for the first time and thought to be lagging behind Fatah by every expert, swept the first parliamentary elections in 10 years, shattering the ruling party’s long grip on Palestinian politics.

The whole moral basis for US policy in the Middle East and with regard to Iraq, is the belief that democracy is a good thing for a people. Well, the poll in Palestine was a more impressive display of democracy than any other in the region, outstripping last year’s votes in Lebanon and Iraq both in its 77 per cent turnout and the range of views that candidates represented. It was proof that civil society in Palestine is more vibrant than anywhere else in the region, that Palestinian politics is dictated not by outside pressure but by the social and economic demands of ordinary people living in appalling conditions.

The Palestinians have arguably carried out one of the only truly democratic elections in the Middle East, all the while under occupation and without a formal State.

One just had to look at the disgusted and bemused looks on the faces of CNN anchors when they were reporting the news of the Palestinian earthquake, or the knee-jerk reactions by American and Israeli politicians that they will not have anything to do with the new Hamas government, to understand that commitment to democracy is, to say the least, skin deep.

If there is one reason for the Hamas success, it is Ariel Sharon. Another reason is the graft, corruption, nepotism, ineptitude and no idea how to move towards peace on Fatah’s part, both under Arafat and after him. These two main causes made a Hamas victory inevitable. The Palestinian people showed they were sick of all the corruption and infighting that habitually characterised the Fatah leadership.

On the other hand, the Hamas victory is the inevitable outcome of everything that Sharon did as prime minister – the transformation of “a relatively modest and ascetic State into an occupying bully” as Israeli journalist Ari Shavit describes his conversations with Sharon over 20 years in the current issue of New Yorker. Realising there would not be any Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, after last summer’s withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinians plumped for Hamas in great numbers, beyond the expectations of Hamas itself.

It will not be easy for Hamas to switch from being a resistance movement and accept the burden of running a State which is not a State yet, to learn from the mistakes Fatah made, and prove to its supporters it is able to bring about an improvement in their living conditions because any money it gets will go to them, not into numbered Swiss accounts.

It also needs time to really learn how to govern the people and disarm its partisans, just as it has successfully stopped all suicide bombings for the past 11 months, and to prepare itself for negotiations with Israel and accept the two-State solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

This will not be easy. The American neocons that surround President Bush whooped with grim glee at the Hamas victory for it suits their plans for the next stage for the region. As Benjamin Netanyahu, the extremist leader of Likud stated: “Today, Hamastan has been formed, a proxy of Iran in the image of the Taliban.” There, the next stage is War on Iran, which will be an even greater catastrophe for the world than the War on Iraq has been. Regardless of the undeniably odious nature of Iran’s government, it is a fact that Iran, unlike Iraq, Israel and even the US itself, has never waged an aggressive war against another country. Or the small simple fact that Israel has possessed nuclear weapons for nearly 40 years.

The European Union now finds itself in a position of great responsibility. It is the largest international donor to the Palestinian Authority and reportedly allowed some of those funds to be siphoned off. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was also wrong to threaten last month that EU funds would dry up if Hamas were in government: in fact, the EU statements after the Hamas victory were more measured.

On this issue and on the related issue of War on Iran, the EU is now largely united. It must not allow the currents from across the ocean to distort its perception of things with facile arguments.

For if sending a suicide bomber on a bus is morally and legally wrong, what is murdering a Hamas politician by a long-range attack that inevitably kills innocent civilians?

Nor should Hamas’ refusal to recognise Israel’s right to exist (which was not even mentioned in the Hamas election manifesto) constitute such a huge problem as it is being made out to be. Israel refused for decades to recognise the existence of the Palestinian people and called them Arabs; Palestinians had to be smuggled to international conferences as part of the Jordanian delegation. Just like the Kurds in Turkey and the blacks in South Africa during apartheid. So, what’s new?

Of course, this does not mean that the future is without problems or no threat to peace exists. But as George W. Bush himself said: “When you give people the vote, you give them the chance to express themselves at the polls, and if they’re unhappy with the status quo, they’ll let you know.” Hamas now has the mandate that Fatah never really had. It can thus be far more credible and stronger than its predecessor in its struggle in favour of Palestinian dignity and statehood, but not at the expense of the statehood of Israel.