JERUSALEM – On Wednesday morning, I watched dozens of Palestinians gathered outside a Palestinian Authority police office surrounded by campaign posters across from the walls of Old Jerusalem on the road to the Garden of Gethsemane.

One day later, the expectant atmosphere had turned to shock as the terrorist organization Hamas triumphed in the first Palestinian elections held in 10 years. Election Day itself had been surprisingly peaceful amid high turnout, but the revolutionary results are likely to further complicate prospects of peace in the region for decades to come.

In the days leading up to the election, locals had been quick to predict that Hamas’s surprisingly strong support in polls had less to do with its commitment to violence against Israel and more to do with the chaos, complacency, and corruption characterized by the Palestinian Authority and its post-Arafat leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Some expressed hope that the responsibilities of governance would have the effect of moderating Hamas, a perspective mocked by a Likud member of Knesset, Yuval Steinitz – “according to this principle,” he said, “we should always invite extremists and terrorists to participate in elections because it will moderate them.” Still other individuals shrugged, saying that trading Fatah for Hamas would just be a matter of trading one covert terrorist organization for an overt competitor.

One conclusion is already clear: Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement policy was prescient. The Arab street does not appear ready to be a serious partner in peace. The added tragedy is that the Palestinian and Israeli electorates are evidently moving in opposite directions – the Palestinians toward further extremism while Israelis increasingly rally toward the center.

A poll by Haaretz and Channel 10 taken the day of the Palestinian elections showed that the centrist Kadima Party founded by Sharon winning an overwhelming 44 seats in the upcoming March Israeli elections, with the Labor Party capturing 21 and Likud falling to 14 seats. This shows the new party’s enduring appeal despite the incapacitation of its leader after a stroke earlier this month. Kadima’s presence has opened the door to new alliances by breaking the deadlocked political allegiances of Israeli citizens.

Over the past 15 years, election results in Israel have swung from right to left like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, first moving right with the election of Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir, who was succeeded by the Labor leadership of Yitzhak Rabin, who was followed in the post-assassination election by Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in turn succeeded by Labor’s Ehud Barak, who was himself finally followed by Sharon. This back and forth cycle may have been stopped by Sharon’s unprecedented decision to use his popular incumbency to create a centrist alternative after repeated clashes with the right wing of Likud over the unilateral disengagement plan.

“Kadima is the perfect result of this left-right trend,” explained journalist Netty Gross of the Jerusalem Report to a group of reporters traveling on an AIPAC-sponsored trip to the region. “Israelis don’t really care about the party or the ideology anymore. They want a solution to the problem of the Palestinians … Kadima has forced Likud to the right and Labor to the left.”

Already an impressive list of candidates have stepped forward to carry the banner of this new centrist party, led by acting prime minister and former Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert, former Labor prime minister Shimon Peres and former Shin Bet security director Avi Dichter.

Skeptics such as Khaled Abu Toameh, the Palestinian affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, claim that Kadima represents only “a refugee camp for political dissidents.”

And yet, as this now leading party shifts from virtual existence to actual electability, there are clear signs of a coherent platform emerging. Israeli Minister of Transportation Meir Sheetrit – now number three in Kadima leadership after winning six elections to the Knesset as a member of the Likud – explained that “the people of Israel want centrist solutions … the framework is not important in my view – the agenda is most important.” He subsequently described a party agenda that follows the basic outlines of the centrist movement in the United States: a belief in fiscal responsibility and free markets, political reform (including open primaries) and entitlement reform, all crowned by a commitment to winning the war on terror at home and abroad.

With Hamas’s election, Israeli politics have experienced their third seismic shock in three months and it is unclear how much the underlying landscape could change in advance of the March elections. Every aspect of the much vaunted roadmap to peace – which based its progress on disarming terrorists – is now thrown into question as avowed terrorists control the Palestinian parliament. Acting Prime Minister Olmert is facing a serious test of his leadership, which will define a post-Sharon Kadima in the public’s mind.

If Olmert misfires, the Labor Party under the direction of union leader Amir Peretz seems unlikely to gain support as their preoccupation with social problems at the expense of security issues reflects the limitations of the left wing in America. Likud, led by the hawkish former prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is the most likely beneficiary.

But even in his absence, Ariel Sharon’s presence defines the terms of the debate. Kadima posters carry his image despite the fact that he is not a candidate, and his name is synonymous with security. His new party faithful are energized, pursuing a goal of 100,000 new party members by the end of the campaign. On the night of the Palestinian elections with the outcome still unknown, I spoke to one Kadima convert, a Tel Aviv University economics professor, Dan Ben David, who is running for office for the first time. “We have a chance to save the country,” he told me, “It’s no less than that.” He may have been more right about the stakes than he understood at the time.