Fight within Hamas

Hard-liner seen trying to use crisis over kidnapping to get group out of politics, back to armed struggle

BY MATTHEW McALLESTER | Newsday Staff Correspondent

July 3, 2006

GAZA CITY, GAZA - Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal is using the crisis over a kidnapped Israeli soldier to win an internal battle in Hamas, pushing it away from the political arena and back to armed struggle, Palestinian officials and leading figures have told Newsday.

Damascus-based Meshaal and other hard-line elements within the Islamist militant group "do not feel they benefit by [being] the government, from the new power," said an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

It is easier for Hamas to be popular, he and other officials said, by being an underground militant group that scores occasional victories against Israel than shouldering the burdens of governance.

"If you are in government you are responsible for schools and everything," said Nimer Hammed, another aide to Abbas. "If you are in opposition you can criticize."

In Gaza and the West Bank, more moderate Hamas political leaders like Prime Minister Ismail Haniya have taken significant steps recently toward pushing Hamas further into mainstream Palestinian politics.

Hamas won a surprise victory earlier this year in parliamentary elections. Since then, the Palestinian Authority and people have suffered cutoffs in aid from foreign governments, pushing Gaza to the brink of economic collapse and causing sometimes violent tension between Palestinian factions. Not since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 has it been so internationally isolated.

The idea of compromise with Israel remains anathema to the hard-line Meshaal and Hamas' primary funding sources - Syria, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group with broad membership throughout the Arab world, especially in Egypt and Jordan, officials said.

"Is Khaled Meshaal ready to cooperate to find a solution to this problem or is he a part of the problem?" said Hammed. "He is part of the problem."

This schism within Hamas may have led to the kidnapping - and the inevitable crisis that followed. It came to a head, officials say, when Abbas and Haniya recently agreed to sign a document that can be interpreted as implicitly recognizing the legitimacy of Israel.

On June 24, one day before the kidnapping, sources told Newsday, Abbas summoned Haniya for a one-on-one meeting. It is highly unusual for Haniya to see Abbas without any aides present, said Imad Falouji, a former Hamas leader, because part of the aides' job is to inform Meshaal about what was said.

Hammed and the other presidential aide confirmed the meeting. Meshaal, officials surmise, was furious and felt that Haniya was probably betraying the essence of Hamas' ideology.

The next day, kidnappers crawled through a tunnel some Palestinian officials suspect had been ready for up to six months, grabbed Cpl. Gilad Shalit and initiated a crisis that could well mark the end of Hamas' short period in government.

"The moment the document was signed," Hammed said, adding that he did not know if the two events were connected, "came this operation."

If Meshaal truly wants to bring down the Hamas government, that could spell doom for Shalit.

But negotiations are continuing in spite of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's public declaration that Israel will not negotiate. Officials in his office are in close contact with Egyptian intelligence officials, Palestinian officials said.

"Olmert may be saying there is no negotiations, but we have to read between the lines," said Tommy Lapid, a former deputy prime minister and a close friend of Olmert. "There is a precedent for negotiation and we have reason to believe that former precedents may be repeated. This is about something bigger than the life of Cpl. Shalit."

Egyptian mediators have presented Hamas and the Israeli government with a detailed plan, which Abbas supports, that would provide for the release of Shalit in exchange for a delayed release of some Palestinian prisoners, Palestinian and Egyptian officials told Newsday yesterday.

In exchange, Israel would not retaliate after the deal by assassinating Hamas leaders; Hamas would cease firing rockets from Gaza into Israel. Neither side has indicated plans to sign off on the deal.

An Egyptian security source told Newsday yesterday that the plan includes taking Shalit across the border to Egypt, where Shalit's health and identity would be checked before handing him over to Israel.

Two weeks later, the officials said, Israel would release recently arrested Palestinian politicians and, with as little fuss as possible, several dozen other Palestinian prisoners.

Special correspondent Sonia Verma contributed to this report from Jerusalem.

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Hard-liner seen trying to use crisis over kidnapping to get group out of politics, back to armed struggle

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