A year after sweeping Palestinian elections, Hamas battered, but unbroken

Friday, January 26th 2007, 6:28 am

By: News On 6

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) _ In the year since Islamic Hamas swept parliamentary elections, Palestinians have sunk deeper into poverty, their government has been ostracized by the international community and hundreds have died in violence.

Yet the militant movement remains popular and its chief rival, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is reluctant to force a showdown, either by disbanding the government or setting a date for early elections.

Battered but not broken, Hamas will mark the anniversary of its election victory with rallies across the West Bank and Gaza Strip Friday. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas will address the main rally in Gaza City after Friday prayers.

In a speech Thursday, a defiant Haniyeh said his government did not surrender to international pressure.

Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian analyst and former Cabinet minister, said Hamas' popularity is not linked to the government's performance.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of Jewish settlements will ``contribute to the radicalization of the Palestinian society and will continue to allow Hamas to enjoy the confidence of the Palestinian people,'' Khatib said.

Hamas' Jan. 25, 2006 election victory came in its first race for the Palestinian parliament. It won 74 of the legislature's 132 seats and ousted Abbas' Fatah Party, which had ruled exclusively since the Palestinian Authority was formed in 1996.

Israel and the West promptly cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to the Palestinian government to pressure Hamas to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

But Hamas has refused to bend, helped by contributions from some Arab and Muslim states.

Abbas, who wants to restart peace talks with Israel, has been trying for months to form a more moderate Fatah-Hamas coalition government, hoping that would persuade the West to lift sanctions.

Although the boycott has deepened Palestinian poverty, the two sides have not been able to reach agreement. In May, the tensions erupted into open fighting that has killed 65 people.

In the latest violence, Hamas militants wounded a Fatah fighter during a rocket attack on his house in the northern Gaza Strip, Fatah officials said.

As neighbors were taking the injured man to hospital, the Hamas raiders stopped the car and killed him with a shot to the head, Fatah said.

The killing capped a night of factional clashes in which a Hamas militiaman died in a bomb attack and each side took captives.

The infighting has aggravated hardship caused to ordinary Palestinians by Israel's recently ended campaign against Hamas and allies who captured an Israeli soldier and fired rockets almost daily at southern Israel.

A frustrated Abbas has threatened to call early elections, but has stopped short of setting a date. Even if a vote was held in coming months, Hamas might not necessarily be ousted.

The Palestinian public is not eager to reinstate Fatah, having voted it out of power last year because of the corruption and patronage during its 40-year domination of Palestinian politics. Also, many Palestinians blame their problems on the Western and Israeli sanctions instead of Hamas.

``The Palestinians have restored their dignity over the past year,'' said Shadwa Olwan, a 29-year-old secretary in Gaza and Hamas sympathizer. ``This government has put an end to 'money in return for compromise.'''

Morad Taha, a 23-year-old unemployed laborer from a village near the West Bank town of Ramallah, said he voted for Fatah last year but would not vote for either if new elections were called.

``Neither Fatah nor Hamas did anything to help the Palestinian people,'' Taha said. ``They are just fighting for power, and don't care for their people.''

Khatib said only a successful peace process would influence Palestinian public opinion against Hamas, which claimed its armed resistance was the reason Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip unilaterally in late 2005.

Hamas' power would be undercut by ``a renewal of a political process of the kind that can bring back the hope to the Palestinian public of the possible peaceful end of the occupation,'' Khatib said.

On Thursday, Haniyeh commemorated Hamas' election victory by attacking the Western sanctions.

``The government did not collapse in the face of this universal pressure,'' he said. ``We remained loyal to the resistance because we are a government born of resistance.''

But privately, a Hamas lawmaker said the group could not continue to withstand the economic pressure for the remainder of its four-year term.