POLITICS : Jailed Hamas Chief Reportedly Supports Palestinian Elections

Among the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who emerged from Israeli jails this week, there was one conspicuous absence: Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Islamic extremist movement Hamas.

The crippled, 60-year-old sheik is serving a life sentence plus 15 years for ordering the killing of Israelis and Arabs suspected of collaborating with the Israeli government. He has long refused to renounce violence or accept any other Israeli condition on his release, and the government of Israel is unlikely to free him as part of any mass prisoner release. “He is too big a [political] card,” one government official said.

Nonetheless, the sheik reportedly supports the position of more moderate members of Hamas who argue for forming a legal political party and running candidates in elections for a Palestinian governing council next year, in exchange for halting military operations.

Yassin is not expected to make such a statement while in Israeli custody, but Palestinian sources say that the four Hamas leaders who traveled from the Gaza Strip to Sudan last week carried his message to try to sway hard-line Hamas leaders outside the country.

These Hamas members living in territory controlled by Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat say they must participate in the political process taking hold in an incipient Palestinian state or lose out completely to Arafat. They say military attacks on Israel are losing support among Palestinians who suffer the economic consequences imposed by Israel afterward.

But some Hamas leaders in Jordan and Syria oppose participating in the elections or anything to do with the peace process, which they view as a humiliating surrender to Israel.

After the meeting in Sudan, Abu Mohammed Mustafa, the Hamas spokesman in Syria, said, “There were no commitments to stop military actions.” And Ibrahim Ghosheh, a Hamas spokesman in Jordan, said, “The position of Hamas has not changed, and it remains opposed to those elections.”

But Ghosheh left the door open for compromise. He said the Hamas leadership would be willing to hold direct talks with the PLO in Sudan, and PLO officials said they expect such a meeting to occur in coming weeks.

The PLO and members of Hamas from Gaza each have a draft agreement for negotiation. Among the basic differences is the degree to which Hamas commits to halting military attacks on Israel from inside Palestinian-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. In any case, Hamas apparently regards such a commitment as a cease-fire that could be terminated if Israel were to attack its members. Dr. Mahmoud Zahhar, a Hamas political leader in Gaza, said he hopes the two sides will reach a final agreement “in the next few weeks.”

Zahhar’s release from a Palestinian jail Sunday after three months of confinement and the reopening of the Hamas newspaper Al Watan are seen as conciliatory gestures by Arafat to pave the way for such an agreement.

Even if they sign, serious problems remain. With Yassin in an Israeli jail and Hamas political leader Mousa abu Marzuk jailed in the United States, some Palestinian political observers wonder if there are any Hamas leaders free to enforce an agreement among radicals prepared to die for their cause.

They worry about splits or rogue Hamas members continuing on the road of violence. For that reason, a loud, public statement from Hamas renouncing violence is not expected.

“Hamas is never going to come out and say, ‘We’ve stopped the struggle against Israelis.’ That would be political suicide,” said Khalil Shikaki, director of the Center for Palestinian Research and Studies in Nablus. “But if they sign an agreement, they know it means they would have to stop the violence.”

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In some 1997 stories, and stories from 2001 onward, Mousa abu Marzuk is referred to as Mousa abu Marzook.

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