MIDDLE EAST: Just two days after he pledged at the Aqaba summit to bring an end to the "armed intifada", the Palestinian Prime Minister, Mr Mahmoud Abbas, is facing his first major crisis: Hamas said yesterday it was halting its ceasefire negotiations with him, because of the conciliatory positions to which he has publicly committed himself.
Mr Abbas had been planning to renew truce talks this weekend with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and groups loyal to the Palestinian Authority President, Mr Yasser Arafat, which have carried out dozens of suicide bombings and shooting attacks at Israeli targets over the past 32 months.
The Arafat loyalists in the Al-Aqsa Brigades say they are still negotiating - albeit presenting conditions for a ceasefire that Israel will likely reject, including the lifting of the siege on Mr Arafat in Ramallah.
But the Hamas spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, said yesterday that the attacks by his movement would go on. "We have no alternative," he declared. "Resistance will continue."
Hamas officials said they would now also persuade Islamic Jihad, a radical splinter group, to break off contacts with Mr Abbas as well. Hamas organised several rallies in Gaza yesterday, attended by thousands of Palestinians, to protest against the US-backed "road map" to peace, and Mr Abbas's public promise to halt the "armed intifada".
A White House spokesman later denounced Hamas as an "enemy of peace", and enjoined all parties in the region to dismantle "the infrastructure of terror".
Mr Abbas had expressed confidence that he would reach a truce arrangement this month, and had held several sessions of talks with Hamas leaders.
Explaining the reverse, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a leading Hamas official in Gaza, castigated Mr Abbas (Abu Mazen) for having failed to highlight, in his speech at the US-brokered Aqaba summit on Wednesday, the plight of Palestinian refugees, Palestinian claims to Jerusalem, and the need to release thousands of Palestinian security detainees from Israeli jails. "We were shocked when we saw Abu Mazen and his new government giving up all the Palestinians' rights," Mr Rantisi declared.
Hamas leaders also cited the killing by the Israeli army of two Hamas gunmen in a village outside Tulkarm in the West Bank late on Thursday as proof that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was duping the Palestinians in asserting readiness for substantive new talks on territorial compromise and independent Palestinian statehood. Israeli troops surrounded the house in which the gunmen were hiding, called on them to come out and entered when they did not. The two were killed in an exchange of fire. Israel said they had been planning an attack. An Arafat spokesman condemned the killings.
It was not immediately clear how Mr Abbas would address the crisis. His aides, who complained bitterly yesterday that the Tulkarm killings constituted a breach of Israel's commitments and badly undermined Mr Abbas's credibility, say he has pledged "not to resort to force" in halting the intifada. But if Hamas maintains its rejectionist stance, he will have to forget that pledge, risk massive internal Palestinian dissent and confront the armed Hamas members, or breach the terms of the road map.