JERUSALEM, 17 October 2005 — Israel appeared to soften yesterday its opposition to Hamas’ participation in January’s Palestinian elections, as officials indicated they would not interfere in the ballot if the group stands.
While maintaining their strong opposition “in principle” to Hamas’ participation, sources close to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that did not mean in practice that they intend to intervene in the Jan. 25 ballot.
“We are opposed to the participation of Hamas which is a terrorist organization, but we do not envisage arresting political officials if they are not involved in terror activities,” a close aide to Sharon told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“Our opposition to participation of Hamas does not imply that there will be interference in the ballot,” he said.
Sharon’s National Security Adviser Giora Eiland also made a distinction between the principle of opposing Hamas’s participation and “practical actions” which would be taken as a consequence.
He told public radio that the “participation of a movement which kidnaps and assassinates Israeli citizens and dispatches human bombs as in Iraq is unacceptable”.
Eiland also argued that Israel was right to have raised the issue as the international community would have otherwise turned a blind eye.
“However if we are speaking on a practical level and ask ourselves whether or not to assist the elections, these are things that should involve discrete dialogue and we should not give the impression of heavy-handed interference.”
A month ago, Sharon was quoted by the New York Times as saying that “we will make every effort not to help them” (the Palestinians) if Hamas fields candidates in only the second ever Palestinian legislative elections.
The hard-line Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom has also said that it would be “inconceivable that a movement such as Hamas... can participate in elections while calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.”
Shalom has cited the now-largely defunct 1993 Oslo accords, which forbid any group which does not recognize the Jewish state’s right to exist, from running in elections. Hamas has been behind the majority of anti-Israeli attacks and suicide bombings during the five-year Palestinian uprising.
However US officials have been more circumspect, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledging a “fundamental contradiction” between Hamas’ armed activities and its embrace of the democratic process while at the same time calling for Israel “to give the Palestinians some room for the evolution of their political process.”
