Politics: Israel/Palestine: Israel decides not to demand Palestine's Abbas move to knock Hamas from the January ballot

Sharon has showed his uncanny sense of stopping short of too much, and did so again this week (after Palestine Authority Pres Mahmound Abbas visited Bush in Washington, one must note). Sharon decided not to demand that the Abbas government deny the terrorist organization Hamas (which has conducted many lethal assaults on Israeli innocents) a place on the ballots when voters go to the polls in January. This event will be Palestine's first election of a Parliament. And previously the overall Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization served as an umbrella agency for all the distinct organizations of the armed movement, but was never popularly elected by a citizenry.

The upcoming elections will be the first step toward a representative body of any kind for the whole country, at least since the death of Yasser Arafat and the election to the PA Presidency of Abbas. If memory serves, Abbas had already insisted on postponing these projected parliamentary elections, saying the country wasn't yet ready for them according to the earlier schedule. In the meantime he has tried to bring not only Hamas to heel, as it had elected a significant minority of reprsentatives to town councils months back, but also the Al Aqsa Brigade's militia, which actually is a wing of Al Fatah, Abbas' own party (with many organized internal factions), formerly itself the key element in the PLO and Arafat's base of power. The renegade conduct of the Al Aqsa terrorists has been a seething sore in the side of the President. If he can't control his own affiliates, how can he tame Hamas (which publicly opposes him), so as thereby to satisfy Israel that the peace process is really on the road?

At the same time that Israel will not break off contacts with the Abbas-led Palestine Authority over the presence of a terrorist organization on the January ballot; yet neither is Israel approving that presence. Israel does not like the fact that confronts it, at all. But when Bush failed to rail against Hamas during the press conference during the Abbas visit to the White House, it would seem Sharon decided to zip his lips on the matter too. For now. In the meantime, however, Sharon is taking action against the continuing Hamas attacks by closing Gaza's borders, to end Palestinian free entry into both Israel itself and into Egypt.

The Associated Press' Josef Federman reported today the other side of Israel's present posture, the pro-active side. Israel has not gone limp:

A top Mideast envoy criticized Israel in especially tough language for moving too slowly on negotiations to open Gaza's borders, saying the country is behaving almost as if the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip never happened.

Without dramatic progress soon, a rare chance to revive Gaza's shattered economy - and the peace process - will be lost, James Wolfensohn said in a letter to the UN secretary general and other international mediators obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

Violence, meanwhile, quickly escalated between Israel and the Palestinians after Israeli troops killed Luay Saadi, a top Palestinian fugitive, and a close accomplice in a pre-dawn shootout in the Tulkarem refugee camp in the West Bank. Saadi, the leader of Islamic Jihad's military wing in the West Bank, was blamed for the deaths of 12 Israelis in attacks in recent months.

Islamic Jihad threatened revenge and launched at least two homemade rockets from Gaza into Israel, causing no injuries. Israel, which said it would not tolerate any attacks from Gaza since it pulled out of the territory last month, responded with an artillery assault on open fields in northern Gaza, the army said. There were no reports of injuries from the artillery.

We should note here the ritual nature of this last exchange; the terrorist org takes its revenge by shooting off two ineffective rockets, while Israel responds with an artillery ammo "assault on open fields." So, Palestinians cannot enter Israel for work, nor can goods enter Palestine for trade in merchandise to be sold in the marketplaces of Gaza, nor vice versa. At the other end of the Gazan territory, now emptied of Israeli settlers, the border is also closed and has been since the removal of the settlers.

Israel closed the Rafah crossing into Egypt, Gaza's main link to the outside world, shortly before it withdrew from Gaza. It also has severely restricted the passage of Palestinian laborers and goods in and out of Israel, the main Palestinian export market, since an earlier wave of rocket attacks right after the pullout.

Israeli officials say the measures are solely because of security considerations.

Meanwhile, Abbas has made public its desire to bring the Al Aqsa militants out of their idleness (which fosters their attacks on Israel) by recruiting them into the Palestinian Authority's security forces. It's true that more hardered veterans are needed by PA security if it is going to have an effect in stopping Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The latter two groups have taken too intansigent an opposition to Al Fatah, the PA, and Mahmoud Abbas to offer them a similar deal. If Abbas can pull off this deal with his own renegades, then perhaps Palestine can be pacified by at least stopping the terror activities of Hamas, in which case perhaps this organizatipn at least will continue its life by transforming into a political force seeking power thru elections. There is some talk that it may even drop the provision in its own constitution committing it to the destruction of the State of Israel entirely. - Politicarp