Netanyahu makes Hamas the issue

JERUSALEM -- Benjamin Netanyahu, the charismatic firebrand of Israel's right wing, yesterday seized on Hamas's electoral victory to bolster two campaigns of his own: to lead the faltering Likud party back to power, and to convince the West that Hamas is an enemy on the order of Al Qaeda.

''Hamas is not merely a clear and present danger to Israel. The expansion of Hamas is a threat to the entire international community," Netanyahu told foreign journalists. He declared that the new Hamas majority in the Palestinian parliament has transformed the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a base for worldwide Islamic militancy: ''They're not just after us. They're after you."

Netanyahu's salvo -- and the sharp responses from his rivals, who accused him of trying to sow panic -- signaled that the landslide win by the militant group Hamas is quickly becoming Israel's leading campaign issue ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for March 28.

It came as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Egypt to urge its government to join the United States in withholding funds from the Palestinian Authority if the Palestinians form a Hamas-backed Cabinet as expected. Hamas leaders yesterday were trying to cobble together a government that would include technocrats, Fatah members and others more palatable to the West.

Netanyahu is looking to reprise the dramatic comeback Likud made in 1996, when the Labor party under Shimon Peres, who assumed the premiership after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was riding high in the polls. After Hamas unleashed a wave of suicide bombings, Israeli public opinion quickly reversed, giving Likud victory and making Netanyahu prime minister.

Some analysts suggest that Hamas this time may be less likely to launch attacks since it needs to convince the world of its legitimacy and has maintained a relative truce for a year, not launching any suicide bombings as it focused on its political campaign. But smaller militant groups such as Islamic Jihad, which has claimed responsibility for all six suicide bombings since the truce, could act as spoilers. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar met Monday with Islamic Jihad, which boycotted elections, as part of talks about the future government.

Netanyahu blasted acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Kadima party -- which has maintained a commanding lead in the polls even with its founder, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a coma -- for what he said was too soft a policy on Hamas.

He said Olmert should not have allowed last month's Palestinian elections to take place with Hamas, which maintains a militant wing that has killed hundreds of Israelis, in the running, nor should it have permitted voting by Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

''They didn't have to. They should have stopped it. They didn't," he said.

He also criticized Olmert's decision to transfer tax payments Israel collects for the Palestinians for this month; under pressure, Olmert's government decided Sunday not to transfer further payments.

Netanyahu was just as critical of Western governments for holding out hope that once Hamas bears the responsibilities of government, it could be pressured to moderate. The US government has said it will provide no aid to a Hamas-led government until the group renounces violence and its call for Israel's destruction, and accepts the vision of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

''It didn't happen with the Taliban," Netanyahu said, noting that winning official power did not moderate the Islamist group that sheltered Osama bin Laden when it ran Afghanistan. ''Nor did it happen with the ayatollahs of Iran."

He implicitly drew an analogy between Hamas and Al Qaeda, noting that it was under the Taliban that Al Qaeda was able to plan the attack that ''sent planes crashing into towers in New York."

Yet within Israel and around the world, debate rages over whether isolating Hamas, with potentially dire economic consequences for ordinary Palestinians, will further radicalize the West Bank and Gaza in ways that do not serve Western interests -- and whether Hamas is analogous to Al Qaeda. Hamas has not been accused of planning attacks outside Israel.

Netanyahu went on to assail Olmert in a meeting with Israeli journalists, stoking a fire already fueled by Likud bus ads branding Olmert a leftist. Kadima struck back quickly.

''It turns out that Bibi is still the same Bibi," the Kadima campaign said in a statement, using Netanyahu's nickname. ''When he's pressured, he tries to insert panic everywhere. Israel is strong and enjoys international support, and will know how to deal with terrorism better than all of Bibi's talk."

Meanwhile, the Labor party is attacking Olmert's government from the left, accusing it of ''zigzagging" on Hamas in response to Likud's pressure. Labor's candidate for prime minister, Amir Peretz, called for more outreach to moderate elements in Hamas.

''The Labor party opposes collective punishment that will strengthen and radicalize the terror organizations," he said in a statement issued Sunday. That came after Olmert's government announced it would cut off the badly needed $55 million in monthly tax revenues to the Palestinians and hinted it might later impose stricter measures, like blocking the flow of goods and laborers into the Palestinian territories.

''We can't ignore the situation where we must strengthen the moderate forces in the Palestinian Authority," Peretz said. ''We must send a message to the moderate people in the Palestinian Authority that we see them as partners for future agreements."

Despite the jockeying, Israel's major parties unanimously acknowledge Israelis' anxiety about the surprise victory of the Palestinian group that introduced suicide bombings to the conflict and carried out dozens before halting them a year ago.

Peretz was careful to add that the government should ''take an unequivocal stand of uncompromising war against the terrorist organizations."

Yet how to isolate a Hamas government without isolating all Palestinians has presented a policy puzzle, both for the United States and for Israel.

Netanyahu, however, was ready to unleash all possible pressure on Palestinians to make them regret their choice at the ballot box. Asked about a New York Times report that Israel and the United States were working together to force a Hamas government to collapse and trigger new elections, he said, ''I hope these reports are true -- that would mean the present government is adopting our policy."