We're here because we want to go to the Orient House. We're here because this is our city. It's an occupied city, I know. They have arms, they have weapons, they have police, they have mortar guns, but it is Palestinian and it is under occupation.

When you have a nation that is suffering collectively from a situation of injustice - of violence, of imprisonment and closure and checkpoints, from a sense of vulnerability and of hopelessness - attitudes are going to be affected by these measures.

Palestinians were religious in many ways, but they did not subscribe to political Islam, historically.

It looks like we will have a bi-polar reality.

We know what they say, they want all of Palestine (including Israel) and say that negotiations did not work. They talk about wanting reform. That doesn't mean they will do it.

The rise of Hamas is a product of the failures of political will in the international community, of the absence of the peace process, of the increase in violence and ideology.

For decades, since the mid-twentieth century, the nationalist movement, and Fatah in particular, has dominated the political scene. Palestinian politics were primarily nationalistic, secular. Now, suddenly we are seeing the election of a religious party with extreme political ideologies and with a social agenda that seems inconsistent with the cultural heritage of the Palestinian people.