GAZA CITY — Mahmoud Zahar is a relatively well-off thyroid surgeon who wears his thinning gray hair in a comb-over that shakes loose when he is angry, which is often. On his forehead is the dime-size bruise of a devout Muslim, the result of many hours spent praying in the mosque across the dirt street from his house here. He is also among the most obdurate leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and will almost certainly be among those who emerge victorious as Palestinians vote Wednesday for parliament for the first time in a decade. Often described by those who know him as severe and short-tempered, Zahar is ebullient as the movement makes its first bid for power in the Palestinian Legislative Council. “We are feeling victory,” Zahar, 60, said during an interview earlier this week in the sunny courtyard of his home. “The people are going to vote for the project of the resistance. Israel should know that a new political and moral atmosphere is going to appear.” Hamas is projected to win roughly a third of the new parliament’s 132 seats and bring the Islamic movement inside the Palestinian government. Hamas, a party […]