After Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon threatened to hamper voting in the West Bank, his foreign minister said Israel regarded Hamas’s participation as “inconceivable”.

“It is inconceivable that a movement such as Hamas, which has a very good chance of doing well or even winning, can participate in elections while calling for the destruction of the state of Israel,” said Silvan Shalom.

“We will not be taken as a nation of fools,” he told military radio.

Sharon, in New York for the UN General Assembly, has said Israel could leave roadblocks in place in the West Bank, making it difficult for voters to reach polling stations, as well as imposing other obstacles in east Jerusalem.

The premier admitted however that Israel “can no longer influence Hamas’s participation” in elections in its Gaza Strip stronghold following the withdrawal last week of Israeli troops after a 38-year occupation.

Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, seen as the leading dove in the cabinet, also voiced fears of a victory for Hamas.

“In such a situation, the major threat is that the Palestinians will lose or endanger the massive financial aid they have been offered,” he said.

“I don’t think the world will support any Palestinian institution that supports terror.”

Shalom said the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords between Israel and the Palestinians “lay down in black-and-white that any organisation which calls for the destruction of Israel cannot participate in elections.”

Hamas did not stand in the first elections a decade ago over its opposition to the Oslo accords, which are now widely regarded as a dead letter.

However its strong showing in recent municipal elections has persuaded it to stand in what are only the second ever legislative elections and try and end the long domination of the governing Fatah faction.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have united in condemning the attempts by Israel, which sees itself as the only true democracy in the Middle East, to disrupt the elections.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the “election is a Palestinian affair and neither the occupation or any other foreign player has a right to interfere in this election.”

The US State Department has said it is up to the Palestinians “to resolve the fundamental contradiction of groups wanting to keep one foot in the political process and one foot in the camp of terror.”

Hamas, behind the majority of attacks against Israel during the five-year uprising, is on the crest of a wave following Israel’s pullout from Gaza, with polls showing most Palestinians credit it rather than Fatah for the withdrawal.

Meanwhile, thousands of armed Hamas militants marched through Gaza City on Sunday, defying efforts to remove unauthorised weapons from the streets just days after the Palestinian president vowed not to tolerate armed chaos.

About 10,000 members of the Islamic faction, cheered by tens of thousands, carried assault rifles, rockets and anti-tank missiles as they paraded in the group’s largest armed show of force in the territory in years.

The demonstration came a week after Israel completed a military withdrawal from the coastal Gaza Strip.—AFP