Palestinian Vote on Statehood Plan Set for July

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday set a date of July 26 for a territorywide referendum on a statehood plan that would implicitly recognize Israel, a proposal bitterly opposed by the ruling Hamas movement.

Abbas’ muted announcement was a far cry from the vigorous campaign kickoff that had been expected before Hamas declared it was abandoning an informal 18-month-old moratorium on attacks against Israel in response to a blast in Gaza that killed seven Palestinian civilians.

Hamas’ move Friday came after five members of a Palestinian family who were picnicking on a beach in northern Gaza were killed by what apparently was an errant Israeli artillery shell. Two other beachgoers were also killed and about 20 injured.

Thousands of mourners paid an emotional farewell Saturday to the slain Ghalia family, the crowd spilling out of the small cemetery in the Palestinian village of Beit Lahiya.

Many wept at the sight of 7-year-old Huda, the family’s sole survivor, kissing her dead father’s cheek before he, her mother and her three siblings, ages 6 months to 10 years, were buried.

“Please don’t leave me alone,” said the girl. She was swimming a short distance from the rest of the family when the explosion ripped through the crowd on the beach.

The Israeli military said Saturday that it was still investigating whether the blast was caused by an artillery shell fired by an Israeli unit attempting to hit Palestinian militants aiming rockets at Israel. Defense Minister Amir Peretz sent a message of condolences and “deep regret” to Abbas, Israel Radio reported.

Hours after the military wing of Hamas announced that it was ending its informal truce with Israel, the group’s fighters began firing rockets and mortar shells toward Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Most of the more than two dozen crude projectiles fell inside Gaza, however, and those that struck Israel caused no casualties or damage, the Israeli military said.

Homemade rockets are a relatively ineffectual weapon in Hamas’ arsenal. But at the height of the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, the group was feared and reviled for its campaign of suicide bombings inside Israel, which left hundreds of people dead or maimed.

If Hamas were to revive that lethal tactic, abandoned around the time the militant movement entered politics in late 2004, most observers predict a renewal of large-scale Israeli military raids in Palestinian cities and towns.

The beach explosion, and Hamas’ vociferous response to it, cast a pall over Abbas’ formal announcement of plans to hold the referendum.

Even though the referendum would be nonbinding, it could give Abbas a powerful mandate to begin negotiating statehood terms with Israel. Hamas, which swept to power in parliamentary elections in January, refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Surveys suggest that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians would cast “yes” votes.

Instead of holding a news conference as planned at his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Abbas made a nationally televised speech in which he said that “the sooner we reach an agreement, the sooner we save our people more tragedies.”

An aide, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, then read out a presidential decree announcing the date for the vote.

Hamas, which has been locked in an escalating power struggle with Abbas, describes the planned balloting as an attempt to undermine its government.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas official, said he hoped to meet Abbas and “explain to him the perils of this referendum, which could cause a historic rift among the Palestinian people.”

The ballot question is based on a document crafted by prominent Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, calling for the creation of a Palestinian state based on the borders in place before the 1967 Middle East War.

Hamas has refused to accept the so-called prisoners’ document, which would effectively amount to renouncing its goal of Israel’s destruction. Abbas said the referendum would be called off if Hamas relented and changed its platform before the vote.

The internal Palestinian political debate comes against a backdrop of an escalating armed conflict between Hamas and Abbas’ Fatah faction. Early Saturday, a Fatah security official was shot dead, apparently as gunmen were attempting to abduct him.

Even the beach explosion and its bloody aftermath were an arena for Hamas-Fatah rivalries. Abbas and Haniyeh, both of whom denounced what they called the Israeli massacre, separately announced that they were symbolically adopting orphaned 7-year-old Huda Ghalia and would provide for her education and upbringing.

Special correspondents Fayed abu Shammaleh in Gaza City and Maher Abukhater in Ramallah contributed to this report.