Yasser Arafat, having secured more than eighty-eight…

Yasser Arafat, having secured more than eighty-eight percent of the vote, assumes the chair of the PA on February 12.

He also remains chair of the PLO.

His close confidant, Ahmed Qurie (Abu Ala), one of the main Palestinian negotiators of the Oslo peace deal with Israel, is elected speaker.

The voters also elect a Palestinian Council, although its powers are ill defined.

Fatah wins fifty-five seats in the eighty-eight-seat legislative council.

Hamas, however, does not participate in the election and continues its violent opposition to the peace process.

Almost immediately after the elections, things begin to go wrong for the Palestinians, the peace process, and the incumbent Labor Party government in Israel.

In early January, Israeli agents had assassinated Yahya Ayyash, the fundamentalist Palestinian leader known as "the engineer" for his bomb-making expertise.

Retaliation by Hamas and Islamic Jihad is devastating.