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Fighting Flares in Gaza City

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Times Staff Writer

A fierce gun battle erupted Monday outside the Palestinian parliament building between rival Palestinian forces, killing one man, wounding about a dozen people and deepening the sense of anarchy gripping the Gaza Strip.

Passersby scattered in panic as gunmen -- some belonging to a new Hamas-led police force and others to a unit loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas -- crouched against graffiti-covered walls and behind parked cars, firing round after round from their automatic rifles and launching rocket-propelled grenades in each other’s direction.

A driver for the Jordanian ambassador in Gaza was killed by a stray bullet in the fighting, which raged nearly two hours in broad daylight in the run-down heart of Gaza City. Each faction denied starting the shootout.

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As the din of fighting rose, civilian cars, many carrying families, made screeching U-turns to get away from the battle scene. A small group of veiled women fled on foot, the tears of one streaming from beneath the black covering that swathed most of her face.

“How can we continue like this?” she said, her breath ragged with sobs.

The spiraling violence was expected to figure prominently in discussions today at the White House between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The Bush administration and Olmert’s government are grappling with the question of how to deal with the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government and the moderate-minded Abbas, who was elected separately a year before the Islamic militant group’s upset victory in January.

Tensions in Gaza have been mounting since Hamas took power in March. They soared last week when Hamas sent a new, 3,000-member police force into the streets, defying Abbas’ veto of its deployment. Since then, gunmen from the Hamas contingent and those of Abbas’ Fatah faction have engaged in an uneasy standoff, narrowly eyeing each other while laying claim to adjacent street corners.

Recent days have brought a steady drumbeat of ambush-style shootings and other attacks.

On Saturday someone tried to assassinate a senior security chief, an ally of Abbas, who was gravely injured when a booby-trapped elevator exploded in his heavily guarded compound. Fatah officials stopped just short of blaming Hamas.

The next day, a bomb was disarmed on a road used by another senior Fatah-allied security chief.

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Hours before the shootout near parliament, a Fatah gunman was killed in a clash in the southern Gazan town of Khan Yunis.

The man slain in Monday’s fighting was identified as Khaled Radaida, the personal driver for the Jordanian ambassador in Gaza. The ambassador, Yehiyeh Qarallah, was not in the car, which carried diplomatic plates and whose windshield was a web of cracks from the bullets that struck it.

Television footage showed the vehicle being hit and slowly rolling backward with the driver slumped at the wheel.

The Jordanian envoy received condolence calls from both Abbas and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader. Qarallah went to Gaza’s main hospital to identify his driver’s body and emerged in tears.

Even before the gunfight, Palestinian officials had expressed growing alarm at the deteriorating security situation. The main Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, were to hold talks this week aimed at calming the situation. It was unclear whether they would go ahead.

“Civil war is the red line that nobody dares cross,” Abbas had said Sunday. But others said the factional battles could be nearing a point of no return.

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“It’s a powder keg,” Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi said. “The security forces must be depoliticized, otherwise you end up with warlords and militias.”

As Bush and Olmert discuss the situation, the differing U.S. and Israeli perceptions of Abbas and his viability as a leader are likely to color their discussions -- not only of Gaza, but of Olmert’s ambitious plan to uproot dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and consolidate them in several large blocks, as a prelude to drawing permanent borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

U.S. policymakers have said that finding ways to strengthen Abbas offers the best hope of containing the Palestinian fighting and countering some of Hamas’ influence.

But Israeli officials, including Olmert, have made it clear they consider Abbas too ineffectual to quell the immediate crisis or to honor commitments made in any future negotiations.

“Abbas doesn’t have even the power to take charge of his own government,” Olmert told CNN on Sunday before leaving for Washington. “So how can he represent that government in the most crucial, complex and sensitive negotiations, about which there are so many divisions within the Palestinian community?”

On the longer-term issue of withdrawals, Olmert has indicated he is prepared to move unilaterally to carry out his policy, as his predecessor, Ariel Sharon, did in quitting the Gaza Strip last summer. U.S. officials have consistently urged that all possible efforts at negotiations be exhausted before Israel undertakes any go-it-alone measures.

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A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that when Olmert’s U.S. visit was first planned, the prime minister hoped to come away with an explicit endorsement of his plan. None is expected now, in part because the administration is unwilling to write off Abbas and in part because Bush is distracted by the war in Iraq, Iran’s nuclear program and his own slipping domestic approval.

In what was widely interpreted in Israel as a nod to U.S. sentiments, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, one of Olmert’s closest confidants, held talks with Abbas at an economic conference in Egypt on Sunday, the day Olmert left for Washington. It was the first high-level Israeli contact with the Palestinian leader in nearly a year.

In Washington, Olmert is expected to pay ritual respects to the U.S.-endorsed “road map” peace plan, even though most Israeli policymakers privately believe it to be moribund, particularly in the wake of Hamas’ election victory.

“We want negotiations, and we know that a peace agreement is what will bring us the best results,” Interior Minister Roni Bar-On told Israel Radio on Monday. “But if that doesn’t succeed, we will take our fate into our own hands and carry out the move unilaterally.”

Despite tactical differences, Israelis hope the visit, Olmert’s first to Washington since he was elected two months ago to succeed the incapacitated Sharon, will help the new leader establish solid working ties with Bush.

Sharon, who suffered a massive stroke in January, had developed a warm relationship with Bush, particularly in the final years of his political life. The two leaders met half a dozen times, including a visit by Sharon -- an avid sheep farmer -- to Bush’s ranch near Crawford, Texas.

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Olmert and Bush share a concern over Iran’s nuclear program, another issue high on the agenda for their talks.

Israel considers the Islamic Republic the greatest threat to its existence, but Israeli officials have said that Olmert will refrain from calling for any military action to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

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