JUBILANT Hamas supporters descended in their thousands on al-Manara Square in Ramallah yesterday, overwhelming the stunned police force as the new order imposed itself on the old. With the flags of the radical Islamist movement they planted a forest of bright green.

“It’s a great day,” Mahmoud Ibrahim, 40, said as he emerged from midday prayers. “Now it’s up to the other factions and parties to respect the will of the people who elected Hamas.”

On every corner men huddled and furtively contemplated the stunning turnaround. Stalwarts of the once- dominant Fatah movement, who returned from exile a decade ago with the late Yassir Arafat and were the chief beneficiaries of his largesse, consoled each other as if there had been a death in the family.

They joked that police would no longer stop cars to check driving licences but to ensure that motorists had performed wodaa, the ritual washing before Muslim prayer.

There was also bitterness in Fatah ranks. Last night hundreds of its armed supporters, firing their guns in the air, marched in Gaza City. They blamed Mahmoud Abbas, the party’s leader and Palestinian President, for the debacle and demanded his resignation.

Many Palestinians feared that the Islamists would stamp their religious code on life by banning alcohol and forcing women to wear the hijab.

The only bar in Gaza City selling alcohol was bombed three weeks ago. At Gaza FM, an independent radio station, one presenter, Jayyab Abu Safia, 22, said that he would leave the country because he feared an escalation of the death threats that he and the station’s six other staff have already received from Islamic extremists.

“Since the result we have switched off the songs and we are going to change all the programmes because they have been condemned by Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” he said.

The power shift in Palestinian politics was being closely watched beyond the West Bank and Gaza. The Hamas victory has implications for Israel and the West, where governments wondered out loud yesterday whether they could do business with a regime headed by a group banned as a terrorist organisation.

America and the European Union are heavily involved in day-to-day Palestinian affairs, providing the bulk of the $1 billion (£560 million) given annually in aid to support education, health and other Palestinian development projects. Western diplomats are closely engaged daily in promoting the search for Middle East peace, a foreign policy objective for successive Western governments.

But, as President Bush and Tony Blair made clear yesterday, no negotiations will be possible with a Hamas government until the organisation recognises Israel’s right to exist and abandons the use of force.

For Israel, the Hamas victory is an even more immediate problem. Because the Palestinians do not live in a recognised state, they rely heavily on Israel for water, electricity, transport and other basic services. Negotiating with ministries run by Hamas could pose legal and ethical problems if the movement still calls for Israel’s destruction.

The result could also play into the hands of the Israeli Right in the general election in March. Kadima, the new centrist party founded by Ariel Sharon, may look less attractive, while Binyamin Netanyahu, Likud’s leader, will exploit fears prompted by the victory. “Today Hamastan was formed,” he said yesterday.

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