The story of Assaf's rise to stardom has become just as popular as the singer himself. The young man -- born in Libya but raised in Gaza's Khan Younis -- arrived late to the competition's Cairo-based auditions after having trouble leaving the coastal enclave through the infamous Rafah crossing point. Once in the Egyptian capital, he literally had to climb a wall to gain entrance to the area where tryouts were being held in order to bypass the locked front gates. A fellow Palestinian who heard him belt a song gave him his audition slot because he believed Assaf had a better chance of winning.

The humble beginnings of this soft-spoken 23-year-old have made him all the more appealing to millions of Palestinians living in the territories and abroad. "He managed to unite Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank," said Itaf Said, a young mother, sitting with her husband and son, all clad in T-shirts bearing the face of the heart-throb. Indeed, reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, the two factions feuding since 2007, has been preoccupying the Palestinian political landscape. For years, the party's leaders have been exchanging jabs, then handshakes, before launching wide-scale campaigns to interrogate or imprison loyalists. This is followed by flights to Cairo, where talks are held and agreements are inked under Egyptian auspices.

In the words of Ahmed Subhi, a young man who lives in Ramallah, Assaf seems to have helped locals forget how Palestinians, once united against the Israeli occupation of their land, are busy fighting one another. "No other figure since Arafat has been this popular," Subhi said. Does this mean he is more popular than the current president, Mahmoud Abbas? "We respect our president and the two issues are very different," he said, after a friend shot him a weary look. "This is cultural and has nothing to do with politics."

The man's observation seems to go against how politicized Assaf's partaking in Arab Idol has become. Soon after Assaf enchanted viewers with his voice, a phone call was made to support him by then-prime minister Salam Fayyad, who resigned following rising tensions with Abbas over his growing power. A week later, Abbas' son was seen in Beirut in the weekly live elimination session. No sooner after that, billionaire businessman Munib Al Masri was seen in the studio audience offering his support and getting a on-air shout out from Assaf.

Assaf's massive grass-roots support had grown so exponentially that it has captured the attention of political figures longing for some sort of legitimacy, said Ala Al Azzeh, who teaches at Birzeit University's department of sociology and anthropology. "Instead of tackling the political and economic crisis, they have reduced their efforts to turning Assaf into a national project," Al Azzeh said.