TEL AVIV, Israel – With both Hamas and Fatah celebrating victories yesterday in Palestinian legislative elections, a power struggle is likely to emerge in Gaza and the West Bank in the aftermath of the vote.

Exit polls yesterday estimated that the ruling Fatah party won between 42 and 47% of yesterday’s contest for the 132-member parliament, with rival Hamas winning an estimated 35 to 44% in an election that featured many voters temporarily handing over their arms before entering polling places. A Bir Zeit University exit poll predicted that Hamas would win 58 seats in the new legislature, while Fatah would hold onto 63, a margin short of a numeric majority. A poll from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research placed the Fatah total at 58 seats.

A senior Israeli military official yesterday warned that it would be days if not weeks until the legislature’s seats were apportioned. “We don’t think Fatah will allow it if they are about to lose power,” the official told reporters yesterday, adding that he expected the party founded by the late Yasser Arafat would try to fix the vote results if they were in danger of losing a majority.

While the relative calmness and order during elections yesterday surprised observers who had expected a wave of armed attacks at polling centers, Gaza has descended into chaos in the last two months with rival factions of Fatah storming police buildings and kidnapping aid workers. Privately, both Israeli and other international observers worried that if the results of the elections were uncertain, chaos could worsen in the area now free of Jewish settlers and with few soldiers after Israel’s pullout. While Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has pledged to unite violence in the territories under “one gun,” he has so far been unwilling and unable to disarm his party’s chief political rival, Hamas.

The prospect for the Palestinian Authority to unite Palestinian Arabs and quell violence looked bleak. One Hamas candidate, Ismail Haniya, yesterday assured reporters in Gaza, “The movement will not disarm after entering the parliament.” Meanwhile, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, said his organization would never recognize Israel’s right to exist, but left open the prospect of joining a coalition government.

President Bush yesterday told the Wall Street Journal that America would not deal with Hamas, an organization designated by America and the European Union as a terrorist group, unless it renounces its intention to destroy Israel. “A political party, in order to be viable, is one that professes peace, in my judgment, in order that it will keep the peace,” Mr. Bush told the newspaper. “And so you’re getting a sense of how I’m going to deal with Hamas if they end up in positions of responsibility. And the answer is: Not until you renounce your desire to destroy Israel will we deal with you,” he added.

One possibility for Hamas, according to a senior Palestinian Authority official yesterday, is for the organization to offer some elected legislators as independents for the cabinet without their official party designation, while remaining an opposition party.

Israel’s acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, on Tuesday said his country would not negotiate with a regime that refused to fight terror. In the same speech, however, he pledged his government’s commitment to a two-state solution and promised new details for a plan to withdraw settlers from the West Bank in the coming days.

American diplomats and Israeli officials quietly expressed optimism that an independent list led by a highly regarded reformer and former Palestinian Authority finance minister, Salam Fayyad, would emerge with enough seats yesterday for him to become a viable candidate for prime minister. Mr. Fayyad, who had some success in making the Palestinian Authority’s books transparent, is expected to win at most two seats in the new parliament.

Last week the Washington Post and the Israeli press broke the news that the U.S. Agency for International Development privately apportioned more than $2 million dollars for Fatah’s election campaign. Splinter groups affiliated with Fatah under the leadership of jailed activist Marwan Barghouti formed Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade in October 2000, a group that claimed credit for nearly as many suicide bombings as Hamas.

The Israeli military leader yesterday was frank in his assessment of Mr. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. “Abu Mazen has not delivered. He is the last guy to rule from the old Arafat generation,” he said. “Now there is a new generation of punks, thieves, and drug dealers challenging the old guard in Fatah.”