GAZA CITY, Jan 26: Ismail Haniya, touted as a possible Palestinian premier should Hamas form a government, is a radical politician who sees no contradiction between running a militia and joining parliament.

Haniya was the first senior Hamas official to declare victory in the Palestinian election and within hours announced that his faction was ready to negotiate with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas to form a political partnership.

“We want to work with you together because the challenges facing the Palestinian people are great and the fight is still long,” he said, addressing his remarks to Abbas’s long-dominant, moderate Fatah faction.

A party apparachik who lives in a refugee camp, he has long been a voice of realism within the sprawling Islamist fundamentalist movement, Israel’s sworn enemy and, for the United States and European Union, a terrorist organisation.

With his neatly trimmed greying beard and often smartly dressed in shirt and blazer, the 43-year-old Haniya embodies Hamas’s internal struggle between the old path of resistance and a debut in mainstream politics.

He has urged the United States to respect the result of Wednesday’s vote, adding that he would consult “all armed groups”, including Hamas’s main Islamist rival, Islamic Jihad, on future political partnerships.

A newcomer to the Palestinian political establishment due to the Hamas boycott of the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords, Hamas faces a difficult task should it decide to enter the Palestinian Authority or form a national government, at home and abroad.

Even before the official election results were announced, international players such as the United States and Europe, who have extended vital support to the Palestinian Authority, made clear their unease at a Hamas win.

US President George W Bush said Thursday that Hamas must renounce its call to destroy Israel. “A political party that articulates the destruction of Israel as part of its platform is a party with which we will not deal,” he said.

Hamas militants consider Haniya a “pragmatist” and open-minded. He was instrumental in securing a de facto Palestinian truce in anti-Israeli attacks for most of 2005, holding talks with Abbas and the other armed groups.

In the Gaza Strip stronghold of Hamas, he has the prestige of being the former head of office of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the quadraplegic spiritual father of Hamas who was assassinated by Israel in 2004.

In a recent interview, he said there was no contradiction in Hamas continuing its armed struggle while sitting in a democratically elected legislature, at least until the whole of Palestine is freed.

“Hamas will be active in the resistance as well as in parliament in the political domain. There is no contradiction”.

“We have no problem with establishing relations with any country in the international community,” he said, citing previous contacts between European countries and Hamas leaders.

He has long eyed the Palestinian Legislative Council as a career. He announced his candidature for the only previous parliamentary election in 1996 but was forced to sacrifice his ambitions when Hamas refused to take part.

Yet statements such as his belief that the future Palestinian state should include “all of Palestine” — including Israel — and be governed by laws “inspired by sharia” Islamic law are likely to inspire fear in the West.

Founded in 1988, Hamas’s armed faction has killed hundreds of Israelis in raids and suicide bombings, its political branch carries out considerable and much-welcomed social work in impoverished Palestinian areas.

Haniya is an eloquent advocate of the Palestinian people’s right to resistance. Only after its goals have been achieved has Haniya said that weapons will no longer be necessary.

His modest, rather good-looking image contrasts with the reputation the outgoing ruling Fatah party has acquired for corruption.

For the moment at least, he lives in a modest home in the Shatti refugee camp, one of the most impoverished districts of the sprawling Gaza City, the opposite end of town to the sprawling villas of Fatah party officials.—AFP