Tensions on rise over Hamas's election role

SHUKBA, West Bank -- Salem Othman Swailem campaigned hard to be mayor of this small West Bank town, promising to reduce a huge municipal debt and persuading women they could vote for his Islamic list of candidates even if their husbands did not. When he got word of his victory last Thursday, he was inside an Israeli prison cell.

Swailem was one of scores of other political activists from the Islamic Hamas group who were arrested in an Israeli sweep last week that Palestinians say was aimed at crushing Hamas's political prospects. With parliamentary elections just three months away, the group is now scrambling to rebuild its leadership.

Israel says it will not allow Hamas, the main instigator of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israelis, to participate in national elections until it lays down its arms and stops calling for the Jewish state's destruction. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed that view, saying last week Hamas could not ''simultaneously keep an option on politics and an option on violence."

But Hamas's foray into national politics -- the parliamentary vote will mark the first time the group has competed in a nationwide Palestinian vote -- poses a dilemma for Israel, and by extension for the United States. With polls showing Hamas likely to take as much 40 percent of the vote in the Jan. 25 Palestinian Assembly election, some analysts believe that trying to thwart the group will only make it more popular, while letting it win a share of the power could nudge it toward a more pragmatic posture.

The arrests have also stoked tensions between Hamas and the ruling Palestinian Authority, which some Islamists believe is colluding with Israel to undermine Hamas and thus maintain its grip on power. That friction boiled over Sunday in Gaza, where three people were killed in gun battles between police and Hamas militants -- the worst internal Palestinian violence in months. Fresh protests occurred yesterday.

''Israel and the United States don't want real democracy here," Swailem said in a phone conversation with the Globe from prison. ''They want to tailor democracy to their size."

Swailem, who was last jailed in 1997, said about 100 soldiers descended on Shukba before dawn on Sept. 25 and rounded up eight participants in his campaign. In nearby Qibya, he said, troops arrested three Islamists, all candidates for local council. The group's main political leader in the West Bank, Hassan Yousef, was also taken into custody in Ramallah.

Swailem said Israeli authorities had yet to tell him why he was arrested. He hoped to find out at his first remand hearing this week.

Until last week, Shukba's local council had been run by members of the town's largest family, which had no connection to political parties. Hamas, an acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, which the US State Department lists as a terrorist organization, began organizing here earlier this year and fought a tough campaign against Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority. The Islamists appealed to residents' rage over widespread perceptions of corruption in the Authority.

A banner draped over the town's main intersection and colored in Hamas's signature green, said: ''Reforming your country is in your hands: Choose the best party."

Swailem's wife, Fatin, said one obstacle they faced was the tendency of wives in the town to vote according to their husbands' dictate. She said a leading sheik in nearby Ramallah issued a religious ruling before the municipal vote instructing women to make their own choice and even allowing them to lie to their husbands about the way they voted to avoid strife at home.

''We went from house to house telling women about this decision," Fatin Swailem told a reporter at her home, as her mother-in-law sorted recently picked olives in two large tubs to prepare them for pickling. Spreading the word paid off. Hamas captured seven of 11 seats in the local council and named Swailem the mayor.

Members of Hamas believe the arrests actually added last-minute support. In 104 municipal contests, Fatah won a majority in 54 towns compared with 25 for Hamas. But in several municipalities, the group must now find replacements for imprisoned council members.

''The movement is trying its best to deal with the negative consequences of the arrest," said Sami Abu Zuhri, the spokesman for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. ''The absence of Hamas cadres has affected the movement in the election process. We are trying to solve these emerging problems."

Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, denied the arrests were connected to either the municipal or parliamentary elections. But he said Israel would not sit back and watch the group make gains in the parliamentary vote in January.

''An armed terrorist organization cannot participate in elections as if it's a democratic organization," he said. ''It's wrong to bestow this legitimacy on them. The Palestinian Authority must realize it presents a mortal danger to Abu Mazen himself," he said, referring to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by his nickname.

Gissin said the men who were arrested were suspected of involvement in terrorist activity because of their involvement with Hamas. Gissin dismissed the common argument that Hamas conducts political activities, including popular anticorruption work and social programs for the poor, separately from its armed wing's activities.

But Yoram Schweitzer, an Israeli terrorism specialist, said it was a mistake to try to block Hamas's political rise. ''I think Israel should basically encourage any tendency in Hamas to get involved in politics," said Schweitzer, a researcher in the Jaffee Institute for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. ''Hamas has been undergoing a political process for a long time and especially in the past year. Even if the group doesn't think getting involved in politics will force it to change, it will."

Schweitzer, who has interviewed failed suicide bombers in Israeli prisons in a bid to sketch a profile of the typical assailant, said Israel should respond aggressively to Hamas attacks, but not in a way that would be perceived as political intervention. ''I'm not naive enough to think [politics] will cause Hamas to abandon violence. But it will have an ongoing influence on the positive side."

Some members of Hamas had opposed the idea of participating in national elections as long as the Palestinian Authority ruled the West Bank and Gaza. Hassan Yousef, the group's leading voice in the West Bank, was among the main advocates and organizers in the political realm.

His arrest last week, along with three of his sons, an office worker, and his bodyguard, was seen as a blow to the movement's political aspirations.

''It certainly has to do with the election," Yousef's wife Um Mousab, said in an interview at her home, commenting on his arrest. ''The Israelis are helping Fatah have free rein in Palestine."

Globe correspondent Sa'id Ghazali contributed to this report.