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| By Israel Insider staff and partners October 26, 2005 |
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The Palestinian parliamentary elections can "go to hell," a Hamas leader said in an interview published Wednesday, vowing to end a cease-fire agreement if the January vote is canceled.
Hamas wants to participate in the elections, but will be strengthened if Israeli pressure to keep the terrorist group out of the running forces the Palestinian Authority to cancel the vote, Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, told the daily newspaper Haaretz.
Israel has demanded that Hamas -- which has emerged as a serious rival to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah faction -- be barred from the parliamentary vote until it disarms.
Many Palestinians have credited Hamas' armed resistance for pushing Israel to withdraw last month from the Gaza Strip, but the group came under fire after one of its homemade rockets went off inadvertently during a rally, killing 21 people.
If the January vote is canceled, Hamas will not honor a cease-fire deal brokered by Egypt last February, Zahar said.
The truce significantly decreased fighting, which killed 3,575 Palestinians and 1,058 Israelis in the past five years, but sporadic tit-for-tat violence has erupted.
"The greater goal is not elections," Zahar was quoted as saying in Haaretz. "The elections can go to hell. The narrow interest of Hamas is for there to be no elections at all because the PA cannot manage anything and our popularity as a movement is rising all the time."
The Palestinian Authority does not have the ability to collect weapons from the terrorist groups - as Israel and the United States are demanding - and will only be able to fulfill its obligation under the internationally-backed "road map" peace plan with Hamas' cooperation, Zahar said.
"There is no choice but to carry weapons in Gaza and Ramallah because Israel is threatening to invade any minute," Zahar said, repeating Hamas' refusal to disarm.
In addition, Zahar told Haaretz that if Israel does not release thousands of Palestinian prisoners, Hamas will kidnap Israelis. The kidnapping and killing last month of an Israeli businessman near Ramallah won "wide support in prison and the various organizations and also in the street," Zahar said.
"It [Israel] is holding 9,000 prisoners. If they are not released, kidnappings will increase," Zahar added.
Hamas, Zahar said, has not changed its belief that Israel should be wiped off the map, but said it is "not impossible" that the group will change its charter, which calls for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Hamas regards the Palestinian battle for a state within the boundaries that existed before the 1967 Mid East war as a "stage in the struggle."
The AP contributed to this report.
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