Israel Moves to Sever Ties to Palestinians

Israel is poised to sever all contacts with the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government except for ties with its moderate president, a senior Israeli official said Sunday.

Such a step would all but rule out prospects for peace negotiations between the two sides any time in the foreseeable future.

The recommendation to cut contacts with the Palestinian Authority, with the exception of its executive branch, came from Israel’s influential security Cabinet, which is made up of the most senior advisors to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The full Cabinet is expected to weigh the decision in the coming week, government spokesman Asaf Shariv said.

In some senses, the Israeli move is a formality. Israel has already said it wants nothing to do with either the Hamas-dominated Palestinian parliament that was sworn in two months ago or the Palestinian Cabinet made up largely of followers of the militant group.

Efforts are being made, however, to keep open a channel of communication via Mahmoud Abbas, the pragmatic Palestinian Authority president who was elected separately last year and has expressed the wish to reach a peace accord with Israel.

The new Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has said his government is completely broke and unable to make this month’s government payroll. But Hamas has refused to rescind its formal calls for Israel’s destruction, which has led the United States and the European Union to close the spigot on hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian government.

Israel, in a move reminiscent of the era of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, said it would boycott any foreign diplomats who met with Hamas officials. When Arafat was alive, Israel would routinely refuse to meet with foreign dignitaries who traveled to his compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Many heeded the call to keep him diplomatically isolated.

Hamas has largely observed a yearlong period of calm, but other groups, including Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, have continued attacks against Israelis.

As Israel has struck an unyielding diplomatic stance against Hamas, its army has sharply stepped up attacks against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

Six Palestinians, most of them militants but including one small child, were killed in Israeli aerial strikes Friday and another eight Saturday. On Sunday, a Palestinian police officer was killed in an Israeli artillery strike in Gaza, Palestinian medical officials said.

Israel confirmed that it had fired hundreds of artillery shells into Gaza in the last three days in response to ongoing rocket attacks by Palestinian militants who operate mainly in a northern swath of Gaza.

Israeli media reports said Olmert had told the army to act as it saw fit to halt the firing of the homemade rockets. “There are no restrictions on the security forces in the event they identify a threat,” he told his Cabinet on Sunday.

The Hamas leadership and Abbas’ Fatah movement made a rare show of unity in speaking out against the Israeli strikes. The new Palestinian spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, denounced “ongoing aggression” by Israel.

Israel is on a high state of alert against possible attacks by Palestinian militants during the Passover holiday, which begins Wednesday.