TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Israel has moved swiftly to try and force Hamas to change its militant policies before such an endeavor becomes even more difficult.
Hamas won a smashing victory in last Wednesday's Legislative Council elections. According to the final count, Hamas that ran under the name of Change and Reform will have 74 seats in the 132-member Legislative Council.
This means it will have an absolute majority but not a two-thirds majority to overrule any law that President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, would veto.
Fatah is the runner-up with 45 seats; The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa will have three, and the Third Way, and The Alternative and Independent Palestine -- two each. Four people who ran independently also got into the legislature.
At Bar Ilan University's BESA Center for Strategic Studies, near Tel Aviv, Senior Researcher Hilled Frisch maintained Hamas' takeover "paradoxically serves Israel's interests."
For over a decade Israel has suffered from a situation in which some Fatah figures negotiated with it while others, such as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, continued attacks. It was a "double-game played by the Fatah-led PA and gullibly accepted by the international community," he maintained.
Abbas, "Might have been opposed to this game (but) it nevertheless continued unabated."
Now the lines are clear: "The reigns of the PA (the Palestinian Authority) are definitively in the hands of the triumphant, Islamic fundamentalist Hamas." The United States, the European Union and Israel consider it a terrorist organization.
"Israel and the international community (now have) ... an opportunity to fashion a tough line against Palestinian Islamic terrorism, and to bring the aid-dependent PA into line," Frisch argued.
The Israeli government seemed to act quickly while the leading Western countries are willing to pressure Hamas.
For the United States, it is illegal to deal with Hamas. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Sunday told the Cabinet that even France, that has been often been critical of Israel, is supporting it on the Hamas issue.
Olmert called French President Jacques Chirac and right at the beginning, even before Olmert had a chance to present his case, Chirac outlined his country's conditions for dealing with Hamas. They were "almost word for word the three points" Israel sought, Olmert told the ministers. That evening, at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stood by Israel.
Jerusalem advocated a tough stance fearing that if it were to start off softly, "it would be difficult to change the policy later on," a knowledgeable source told reporters. The source spoke on condition of anonymity.
Israel is seeking an international ban on any dialogue with the Hamas or the Palestinian Authority before they meet three conditions:
-- Disarm terrorist organizations and have them abandon the path of terror.
-- Recognize Israel's existence and cancels Hamas' Charter that calls for its destruction, and
-- Recognizes all the agreements that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have signed and all the understandings that were reached.
"These are not conditions for negotiations. These are the basic principles," reporters were told.
"The State of Israel will not conduct any negotiations with a Palestinian administration that even part of it is an armed terror group that calls for Israel's destruction," the Cabinet resolved.
The statement was worded so as to cover different scenarios for the future Palestinian government: One in which Hamas would head the government, another in which it would be part of such a government, and possibly also a third in which Hamas would be the power behind a government of technocrats.
The timing for the Israeli action seemed ripe also because Hamas leaders seemed to be overwhelmed with the elections results. They wanted to become a major element in the Legislative Council but were not sure whether they wanted to join the next government. Now the ball is in wholly in their court and they've got to make some tough decisions.
According to Israeli chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, Hamas leaders are trying to reconcile their extremist ideology, their refusal to recognize Israel, and their wish to maintain the option of terror on the one hand with the desire to run a functional governing body and expectations they honor agreements the previous regime signed.
At the moment Hamas' leaders are following a policy of "responsibility" and in the short time will probably try to restrain terror, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz reported. The trouble might come from Fatah renegades and from the Islamic Jihad, and "it is possible that in the first stage Hamas will try to restrain the Islamic Jihad," Mofaz said.
For its part Israel is allowing some 10,000 laborers to come across to work and in the afternoons one sees people walking along a Jerusalem-Tel Aviv Highway 443, past the military checkpoint, to their homes.
However Olmert halted the transfer of some NIS 250 million (about $54 million) that was due Wednesday. This is Palestinian money. Israel collects taxes from the Palestinian workers, levies customs on goods imported for the Palestinians, deducts money to cover its costs and other services and transfers the remainder. The Palestinians expected also 50 million euros, Mazen Jadallah of the PA's Finance Ministry told United Press International. That money goes to cover the PA expenses including the salaries to some 150,000 employees.
Olmert said he halted the transfer because, "I have no intention whatsoever of allowing the transfer of funds that will be used for terrorism .... we have to be cautious."
The government is not yet Hamas.' It is a Fatah-led caretaker government whose accounts, Jadallah said, are published.
The freeze might be form of pressure on the Palestinians.
"The Palestinians are the most subsidized and dependent people in the world," wrote Frish.
"No matter how efficient and uncorrupt a new Hamas government may ... be the 'savings' afforded by such efficiency could not possibly compensate for the serious cuts in international aid that will be implemented if Hamas fails to deliver on these issues....
"Now is the time to sit tight, walk softy, carry a very big stick, and work with the international community to force Hamas to dismantle its arms and cease its incitement. Perhaps over time, the Palestinian public will sober up from this experience, and elect a more mature leadership that will be ready for a real end-of-war deal with Israel," he wrote.
