Aviad Rubin Political-Elite Formation and Transition to Democracy in Pre-State Conditions: Comparing Israel and the Palestinian Authority IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS THERE HAS BEEN A DRAMATIC CHANGE IN Palestinian politics following the death of Yasser Arafat, the long-lived and omnipotent leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), in November 2004. After the Oslo Accords Arafat became the chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and continued in this position until his death. Since that time, the Palestinians have been unable to come up with an alternative leadership to step into Arafat’s position. General elections for the presidency took place among the Palestinian population in January 2005. Arafat’s predecessor in Fatah, Abu Mazen, eventually won the presidential elections with more than 65 per cent support. General elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) took place in January 2006. To the surprise of many, the radical Islamist party Hamas won a sweeping victory with 74 out of 132 seats in the PLC, and thus formed the new government. Since then, the Palestinians have been unable to stabilize their political rule. The two main political factions, Fatah and Hamas, have descended into violence between themselves and the situation has deteriorated rapidly into a civil war, despite numerous attempts at reconciliation between the two camps – either directly or with the assistance of Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The peak of these events was Hamas’s occupation by force of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, which actually divided the PA into two separate political entities: Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. These events reflect the failure of the democratic campaign in the PA. Although the PA was meant to be a democracy according to the Oslo Accords, its institutions of democracy were – until their collapse – weak and marked by patronage, corruption, coercion and the de Government and Opposition, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 262–284, 2009 doi:10.1111/j.1477-7053.2009.01288.x © The Author 2009. Journal compilation © 2009 Government and Opposition Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.