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Israeli Attacks Target Hamas Election Bid: Experts
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Hamas political leader Mohammad Ghazal was among those arrested by Israel on Sunday.
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By
Yasser Al-Banna, IOL Correspondent
GAZA
CITY, September 26 (IslamOnline.net) – The Israeli military
escalation in the Gaza Strip is aimed at provoking Hamas into
attacking Israeli targets and eventually undermining its participation
in the January legislative elections, Palestinian experts said on
Monday, September 26.
"Israel
wants to cast a pall over the upcoming elections by arresting Hamas
politicians and candidates," Taher Al-Nono, a political analyst
and a politician, told IslamOnline.net.
Israel
arrested Sunday, September 25, up to 207 Palestinians, including Hamas
leaders in the West Bank Mohammad Ghazal and Hassan Yusuf, both
potential parliamentary candidates.
Hamas
official Nayef Rajoub accused Israel on Saturday, September 24, of
escalating violence to sabotage the movement's planned participation
in the legislative elections.
The
latest escalation began when Israel assassinated three Islamic Jihad
fighters on Friday, prompting the resistance movement to fire three
rockets into the Israeli town of Sderot.
Shortly
afterwards, Israeli warplanes bombarded a Hamas rally in the Jabalya
refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, killing 19 people and
injuring dozens.
Sharon
has recently vowed to disrupt Palestinian legislative elections if
Hamas fields candidates.
Hamas
is widely expected to make a strong showing in the legislative polls
at the expense of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' mainstream
Fatah movement.
Tarnishing
Image
Al-Nono
said Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon wants to "tarnish Hamas’s
image in the eyes of the Palestinians and portray it as the main
reason behind their sufferings," citing leaflets dropped by
Israeli warplanes on the Gaza Strip.
Adli
Sadeq, another analyst, agreed.
"Sharon
wants to leave the impression that the core problem lies in Hamas’s
weapons and not in the West Bank separation wall, or settlements or
Judaization of Al-Quds."
They,
however, expected the Israeli schemes to fail.
"It
would backfire on Sharon at the end of the day and Hamas’s
popularity will keep soaring," Al-Nono said.
Hamas,
which saw its popularity soaring during more than four years of the
Al-Aqsa Intifada, entered electoral politics for the first time at the
end of last year.
It
secured a landslide victory over corruption-tainted Fatah in the
first-ever Gaza Strip council elections in January.
Provocation
The
two analysts further believe that Sharon wants to drag Hamas into
carrying out resistance attacks inside Israel after nearly seven
months of shaky truce.
"Sharon
wants to leave the impression that Hamas doesn’t want to engage in
the political process but is only preoccupied with the destruction of
Israel," Nono said.
"Hamas
should act in unison with the Palestinian Authority at this critical
juncture to skip the Israeli snare," added Sadeq.
Hamas
decided on Sunday, September 25, to halt Gaza-based attacks against
Israel and end military parades.
"We
are committed to protect the Palestinian people from the Zionist
entity and to continue in the climate of celebrations" marking
the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip, said senior Hamas leader
Mahmoud Al-Zahar.
Domestic
Agenda
Iyad
Al-Barghouthi, professor of political science in the West Bank
university of An-Najah University, said the Israeli escalation was
also motivated by a domestic agenda.
"Sharon
is trying to court the rightists in his Likud party to beat off his
anti-pullout rival Benjamin Netanyahu," he told IOL.
Some
3,000 members of Likud's central committee will vote Monday on whether
to subject Sharon to an early leadership contest and face the prospect
of being ousted.
Opinion
polls have indicated that the central committee will snub Sharon's
desire to hold off a leadership primary until April and instead
endorse Netanyahu's demand for a ballot in late November.
Sharon
is furious that his leadership of the party he helped found is in
doubt at a time when his popularity with the public and abroad has
never been higher after the Gaza withdrawal.
The
77-year-old has resisted calls from some Likud power-brokers to
declare he will remain in the party regardless of Monday's vote,
fuelling speculation Sharon could take his leave and go it alone
within a matter of days.
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