Hamas on top in key West Bank university election

Hamas came out on top in a student election on Wednesday that is viewed as a key barometer of political opinion in the occupied West Bank.

The bloc affiliated with the Islamist movement won 25 seats with 4,481 votes in the Bir Zeit University student council’s annual election, while the Fatah-supported bloc won 20 seats with 3,539 votes.

There have been no legislative elections in Palestine since 2006, so the student polls are a litmus test of change in Palestinian public political opinion. Fatah and Hamas fiercely contest the election, and spend tens of thousands of dollars to fund their campaigns.

Hamas candidates criticized Fatah over security coordination

Bir Zeit is the only place in the West Bank where Hamas can promote its activities and politics without restrictions from the Palestinian Authority.

with Israel, corruption and the poor performance of President Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah targeted Hamas over its leaders’ stay in five-star hotels in Qatar despite the financial crisis, and called on its rivals to lift the ban on student council elections in universities in the Gaza Strip.

Amer Hamdan, a human rights activist in Nablus, told Arab News that competition between student blocs in the Palestinian universities was “a reasonable indicator of the level of support that Palestinian factions enjoy among the public.” Most students followed their family’s political stance when voting in university elections, he said. Bir Zeit was established in 1973 as a public, nongovernment university, and its graduates are prominent leaders in politics, economics and business administration.