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"Most people do not now remember that the United States expended a great deal of money and effort in "growing" the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority's semi-state, only to see it destroyed utterly by Israel. That destruction cleared the way for Hamas' rise to "glory."
I don't think that's exactly true. The PA always suffered from a legitimacy problem in that it was literally created by Israel and the US, and was led by PLO lifers, most of which had never lived a day in the territories prior to 1993. The domestic contingent of Fatah was almost from the first days of the PA in conflict with the PLO wing from the exterior.
The PLO led PA had even more problems with creating an illusion of being a free actor. It was forced to provide intelligence on every day activities of Palestinians to the CIA. A merciless round up of Islamic activists in the mid 90's on behalf of Israel led to a further deterioration in popular support. Added to that, PA and Fatah officials are and were notoriously corrupt--and obviously so, to an absurdly insulting degree.
I think the Palestinian polity may have been more accepting of all of these problems, if the PA, led by Arafat's fatah, had been effective at garnering good concessions, and at least could have stopped settlement construction and ease movement restrictions. But these problems also only grew worse. After the death of Arafat, Abu Mazen, who was another notoriously corrupt PLO bureaucrat, took over. He had zero credibility with the Palestinian people, and the PA only grew closer in its one-way relationship with the US and Israel while life grew worse for Palestinians. Hamas, though roundly disliked through most of the territories, was the only viable party that was very obviously not corrupt, and did take a stand with Israel. People really had no choice.
Thus, the Fatah led PA was never an even an option for Palestinans--it just took them a decade to realize it. In the vacuum, as the US and Israel forced Fatah to marginalize all other party options, Hamas was the only group that had the social connections and infrastructure to step in as an alternative.
