Palestinian groups issue death threats against FM Sha'ath
By News Agencies
GAZA CITY - Palestinian militants on Tuesday threatened to kill Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath if he returns to the Gaza Strip, calling him a "traitor" and accusing him of corruption.
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Members of the Popular Resistance Committee, an umbrella for several militant groups, made the threat in a statement sent to news agencies. The statement was signed by the Jenin Martyrs' Brigades, the armed wing of the umbrella group.
Shaath was in Cairo on Tuesday and was not immediately available for comment. He was to return to the West Bank on Wednesday.
The militants cited Shaath's meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom in the Italian resort of Rimini last week as the main reason for the threat. At the time, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners were on a hunger strike, and the militants said Shaath should not have met with his Israeli counterpart under such circumstances.
The statement described Shaath's numerous meetings with foreign leaders as "fruitless" and referred to Shaath as "the man who sold out the Palestinian cause."
Last month, the Jenin Martyrs' Brigades kidnapped the Palestinian police chief in Gaza, Ghazi Jabali, for several hours, and then released him unharmed. A wave of unrest has swept through Gaza in recent weeks, a sign of the increasing control of armed gangs and growing dissatisfaction with Yasser Arafat's rule.
Groups make preparations for local elections
Hamas and Islamic Jihad urged their supporters on Tuesday to participate in local Palestinian elections that will be a test of strength between the militant groups and Yasser Arafat as an Israeli pullout from Gaza looms.
If an Accountants Union election in Gaza last week was any indication, Hamas could make a strong run for municipal council seats in the Palestinian territories in the still unscheduled local ballot.
Pro-Hamas accountants won 10 of the 13 seats up for grabs in the union's leadership council, beating candidates from Palestinian President Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction.
"We call on all our people to participate in this process to make the election successful," Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, told Reuters. "If we win the election we will reactivate the municipalities to serve the Palestinian people."
Khaled al-Batsh, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, said he hoped the municipal ballot would lead to an end to local government corruption and cronyism.
Islamic Jihad, he said, was likely to stick to its traditional position of boycotting legislative and presidential elections.
A Hamas spokesman said his group would weigh participation if such elections were not seen as part of any peace process with Israel, which plans to pull settlers and soldiers out of Gaza by the end of 2005 as part of a unilateral "disengagement".
Both Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state, oppose the interim peace agreements Arafat signed with Israel and boycotted the 1996 ballot in the West Bank and Gaza that elected him president.
Suicide bombers from the two groups have carried out attacks over the past four years of Israeli-Palestinian violence that led to Israeli military clampdowns which Arafat's Palestinian Authority says made it impossible to hold a new general
election. But Hamas also runs a popular social welfare network.
Voter registration for the municipal ballot begins on September 4 in the West Bank and Gaza.
Palestinian political analyst Hani Al-Masri predicted big wins for Hamas, citing the collapse of the peace process, hardships caused by Israeli military operations and corruption within the Palestinian Authority.
In what some Palestinian analysts viewed as a sign of Hamas moderation, leaders of the group have said it might accept an interim peace solution establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
But they also said Hamas would reserve the right to resume its armed struggle and would never recognize the Jewish state or abandon a claim to all of what it calls historic Palestine, including land inside what is now Israel.
Some Palestinian officials have repeatedly accused Hamas of acting like a parallel authority in the West Bank and Gaza and voiced fears it could emerge greatly strengthened by a municipal election.
But Masri welcomed Hamas participation in mainstream Palestinian politics. "Hamas getting rational is far better than its sticking to extreme policies," he said
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