Israel Eases Curbs on Palestinian Election

Israel’s Cabinet agreed Sunday to allow a limited number of Palestinians to cast ballots in disputed East Jerusalem, moving to defuse a dispute that had threatened to delay a Jan. 25 parliamentary election.

However, Israeli authorities insisted that the names of candidates from the Palestinian militant group Hamas would not be allowed on the ballot in East Jerusalem, and later detained three Hamas candidates on suspicion of campaigning illegally in Jerusalem’s walled Old City.

The unanimous Cabinet decision was considered a victory for acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who stepped into the leadership role after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a massive stroke Jan. 4.

Sharon, who has not regained consciousness and remains in grave condition, underwent a tracheotomy Sunday night, a procedure doctors said was meant to help wean him off the respirator to which he has been attached since his stroke.

Doctors decided to perform the tracheotomy, which involves inserting a breathing tube directly into the windpipe, because of concerns that the tubing connecting Sharon to a respirator could cause damage to his throat and esophagus if it remained in place much longer.

The Israeli leader’s prognosis is murky but grim. The extent of the brain damage the 77-year-old prime minister suffered in his hemorrhagic stroke is not yet known, but he is not expected to be able to resume his duties.

At Sunday’s Cabinet meeting, the third to be held without Sharon, Olmert told ministers that if the Palestinian elections were delayed as a result of the East Jerusalem dispute, Israel would be “blamed for all the repercussions.” Israel came under strong U.S. pressure to ease its opposition to voting in the area, the mainly Arab sector of the city that was annexed by Israel after the 1967 Middle East War. Israel fears that allowing the vote to take place could bolster the Palestinians’ claim to the city as capital of their future state.

Even while urging that the vote in East Jerusalem be allowed, Olmert said Israeli authorities would take “strict care to remove all signs and symbols regarding Hamas.”

Limited voting also was allowed in East Jerusalem during the Palestinians’ 1996 parliamentary election and last year’s presidential vote. In the coming election, only about 5,000 of the more than 100,000 Palestinian voters will be able to cast ballots at post offices inside the city limits; the rest will have to travel to outlying Arab villages.

The Israeli decision left the Palestinian Authority in the odd position of having to defend the right of its dominant Fatah faction’s rival, Hamas, to fully participate in the election. The latest public opinion polls have shown Hamas pulling nearly even with Fatah.

“All parties and candidates ... have the right to campaign in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem,” said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel.

Palestinian officials said privately that Israel’s steps against Hamas would probably only serve to increase the group’s popularity. Hamas scored strongly in a series of municipal elections held last year, trading on its image of incorruptibility.

The Palestinian vote will come as Israel gears up for its own general election, set for March 28. Kadima, the centrist party that Sharon formed less than two months before being felled by his stroke, is the clear front-runner, with Olmert expected to assume its leadership.

The question of Sharon’s status is a delicate one, even though Israel has begun to recover from the initial shock of his stroke. The Justice Ministry said Sunday that under the law, the prime minister could not be declared to be permanently incapacitated for at least three months.

That would leave the 60-year-old Olmert, Sharon’s deputy and one of his closest confidants, at the helm as acting prime minister at least until the election.

Although Olmert has tried to defer any major decision-making in the early weeks of his interim tenure, he may soon face an ugly confrontation with Jewish settlers, who once considered Sharon their patron but turned on him in fury when he ordered the uprooting of settlements in the Gaza Strip that was carried out last summer.

In recent days, settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron have been engaging in escalating clashes with Israeli police and soldiers over an evacuation order issued against eight Jewish families that set up an enclave in a Palestinian neighborhood. On Sunday, the settlers, some of them masked, again flung eggs, stones and curses at troops.

Olmert told the Cabinet that authorities would no longer tolerate such “wild and unrestrained” attacks against police and soldiers. The unauthorized enclave is to be emptied forcibly if settlers do not leave in the next month.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army said it was investigating an incident in which a Palestinian woman and her 20-year-old son were shot to death by soldiers in a village outside the West Bank town of Nablus. The military said the troops fired back after being shot at by gunmen.

Also Sunday, Israeli authorities shut down the main cargo terminal between Israel and the Gaza Strip, citing intelligence warnings of a planned attack by Palestinian militants. The Karni crossing was the scene of a suicide attack last January that killed six Israelis.