By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
May 11, 2005
If the upcoming Palestinian Legislative Council election results in Hamas politically dominating the Gaza Strip, Israel should reconsider its planned withdrawal from the area, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said Monday.
Otherwise, Shalom warned, Gaza would become "Hamastan," a virtual terrorist mini-state.
A day later, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas criticized Israel for its opposition to the participation of an armed terror group in government, and attacked the Jewish state's democratic values.
"What kind of democracy is this? What democracy do the Israelis believe in?" Abbas asked cynically.
According to Abbas, the brand of democracy Palestinian Arabs believe in - terror groups and all - is the basis for lasting peace in the Middle East.
For its part, Israel has indicated it would have no problem with Hamas taking part in elections, if the group first disarmed.
That, however, is something Abbas has repeatedly stated he would not require, despite the PA's peace obligation to eliminate the threat of anti-Jewish violence by collecting the weapons of groups such as Hamas.
That obligation had its latest incarnation in the closing statement of the Israeli-PLO summit in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this year.
There, Abbas pledged to put an immediate halt to all Arab violence against Jews everywhere in Israel and the PA-controlled territories.
In addition to the obvious continuation of terror, Israel Radio reported Wednesday that the Abbas regime was not even collecting the weapons of wanted terrorists publicly bearing arms in those towns recently transferred to full PA security control.
Last month, Abbas claimed his forces had rounded up all illegal weapons in Jericho and Tulkarm.
But Israel Radio Arab Affairs Correspondent Avi Yissakharov reported that Abbas's orders to collect the arms were not carried out by his security commanders on the ground.
The orders, at any rate, became largely irrelevant when Abbas recruited most of the wanted men in Jericho and Tulkarm into the security forces and put them on the PA payroll, rendering their guns "legal."
In related news, a senior IDF official Monday said the prolonged battle against "Palestinian" terror had left Israel unready for future wars against its neighboring enemy states.
"If you look at the military command, most of the time is spent on the here and now rather than on preparing for a future war," Col. David Marciano, head of the armaments department in the Ground Forces Command, told the annual Military Technologies conference in Tel Aviv.
Middle East Newslines quoted Marciano as saying Israel's combat readiness was a major casualty of the "Oslo War," as was the state's ability to upgrade aging weaponry.
Last month, Middle East Newsline reported unnamed US officials had revealed that Israel recently expressed its belief to Washington that Iran and its Arab allies would launch a war against the Jewish state in 2006.