GAZA CITY, 5 January 2006 — Israel is ready to open talks with Hamas if it wins the Palestinian general election as long as the movement lays down its weapons, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said yesterday. Israel has in the past always steadfastly refused to meet representatives of the group and still refuses to recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
But with Hamas fielding parliamentary candidates for the first time in the Jan. 25 elections, Mofaz indicated that a meeting was possible if Hamas ended its campaign of violence. “Israel is prepared to have negotiations with Hamas if it wins the elections and if it announces that it has disarmed,” army radio reported the minister as telling a group of college students.
Israel has consistently voiced opposition to Hamas’ participation in the election, arguing that it should be barred under the terms of the Oslo accords which brought the Palestinian Authority into being for its refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
In another development, hundreds of Palestinians streamed unchecked into Egypt yesterday after fighters broke through a Gaza-Egypt border wall with stolen bulldozers and seized control of government buildings.
The armed men, linked to Fatah party, demanded the release of their leader, who is being held in the kidnapping of three Britons.
Fatah-affiliated vigilantes demanding government jobs or the release of imprisoned friends have been responsible for much of the anarchy, particularly since Israel’s pullout from Gaza in September.
The rampage began late Tuesday, after Palestinian intelligence arrested Alaa Al-Hams, an Al-Aqsa fighter, on suspicion he and his followers kidnapped human rights activist Kate Burton and her parents for two days last week. The Burtons were among 19 foreigners abducted by Fatah gunmen in Gaza in recent months. All have been freed unharmed.
Gunmen fired at the Palestinian security headquarters in the southern town of Rafah where he was held, briefly took over four government buildings and then drove to the Rafah crossing — reopened last month after intense negotiations directed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Firing in the air, they closed the entrance gate and told waiting passengers to leave the area. They set up an impromptu checkpoint at the access road to the crossing, turning away travelers.
They left the buildings and the crossing after three hours. Then they stole two bulldozers in Rafah and led an impromptu parade of hundreds of jubilant residents toward a massive wall a few hundred meters from the border. Five fighters rode in the shovel of one bulldozer, while children held onto the back of the vehicle.
“We are going to do everything we can to pressure the authority to release our leader,” said an Al-Aqsa activist who gave his name as Abu Hassan.
The bulldozers smashed two holes in the towering concrete barrier at the same spot where Hamas fighters had blasted through it during the border chaos that followed Israel’s Gaza pullout in the summer.
Palestinian security officials had closed the earlier hole with a patch of heavy concrete blocks, but those quickly gave way before the bulldozer yesterday.
— With input from agencies
