Abbas Floats Threat to Quit

Lashed by criticism from within Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction over his negotiating stance toward Israel, Mahmoud Abbas threatened to resign as prime minister, senior Palestinian officials said Tuesday.

The threat was a symptom of some of the bitterest infighting to break out among Palestinians since the U.S.-backed peace initiative was agreed to more than five weeks ago. In another blow to that fledgling process, the militant group Islamic Jihad, a signatory to a 10-day-old truce agreement, acknowledged Tuesday that one of its operatives had carried out a bizarre suicide bombing Monday night that killed an Israeli woman at her home in a remote Israeli farming village.

Islamic Jihad’s leadership blamed rogue elements for dispatching the bomber, and said the group intended to abide by the cease-fire.

Abbas’ resignation threats came at a stormy session Monday night of the Palestinians’ main policymaking body, the Central Committee of Arafat’s Fatah movement. Its dozen members are all handpicked by Arafat.

According to accounts Tuesday by several Palestinian Authority officials who were present, Abbas was verbally pummeled during the closed-door session by hard-line critics who said he had mishandled talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

During one heated exchange, Abbas declared, “I cannot go on like this” -- interpreted by those present as a threat to step down as prime minister, a post to which he was appointed by Arafat this year under heavy international pressure.

Later, Abbas submitted a letter resigning from the committee, but his resignation was refused, said Sukhar Habash, a committee member.

The dispute highlights the complex relationship between Abbas and Arafat, whom the U.S. and Israel have sought to sideline. Abbas is careful never to criticize Arafat publicly, but has been trying hard to quietly carve out his own power base. As the elected president, Arafat continues to enjoy popular support and pervasive political influence behind the scenes.

The beginning of Abbas’ tenure was marked by a showdown with Arafat over the makeup of the Cabinet. At key moments since then, Arafat has made public statements that appear aimed at undermining the prime minister.

According to Israeli news reports of the committee meeting and Palestinian officials, Abbas also submitted a second letter to Arafat, asking that he be given guidelines for negotiating with Israel, and saying he would resign if he felt he could not carry them out. The Abbas government announced it was putting off a planned meeting between the prime minister and Sharon.

The two had been scheduled to meet today to discuss ongoing steps under the peace plan known as the “road map,” including the release of some Palestinian prisoners and Israeli troop pullbacks from more cities in the West Bank. The two sides have sharp disagreements over both.

An Israeli government spokesman said the postponement was an internal Palestinian affair, and would not comment. Palestinians said the Abbas-Sharon meeting would be rescheduled, but would not say when.

Palestinians acknowledged that that a serious schism had developed since Abbas and Sharon endorsed the U.S.-backed plan at a June 4 summit presided over by President Bush.

In Washington, administration and congressional sources said Tuesday that the Bush administration plans to provide its first direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority in the coming days to help shore up Abbas and the peace process, Reuters news agency reported. The sources said the first installment would be $20 million and would be used to improve basic services in Palestinian areas being vacated by Israeli forces.

The Palestinians already get an average of $100 million a year from Washington indirectly. Israel gets about $3 billion.

Militant groups and ordinary Palestinians alike have criticized Abbas for taking too moderate a position, particularly on what they regard as core issues -- the release of thousands of prisoners, the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem as their capital and the demand that Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes when Israel was created in 1948 be allowed to return together with their descendants to what is now Israel.

Abbas has taken a conciliatory approach, his supporters say, in part to convince the Israelis that the Palestinian leadership is seeking to make a genuine effort to end the 33 months of violence that has claimed the lives of more than 800 Israelis and more than 2,400 Palestinians. He is hoping that strategy will make it easier to later negotiate the most contentious issues including Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

“There has been very tough internal debate,” said Ahmed Soboh, the deputy information minister. “This has been very, very difficult for all of us as Palestinians.”

Signs of internal disarray were apparent as well in Islamic Jihad, the second-largest of the Palestinian militant groups that signed a cease-fire on June 29. Israel was not a party to the agreement, which was negotiated by Abbas’ government with the help of mediators.

In a statement faxed to Western news organizations, a branch of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank declared it had dispatched the bomber who blew himself up inside a home in the village of Kfar Yavetz, killing a 65-year-old Israeli woman. A videotape of the young assailant, clad in jeans, clutching an assault rifle and reciting Koranic verses, was later circulated in the West Bank.

The group’s leadership in Gaza told reporters that the bomber, identified as 22-year-old Ahmed Yehiyeh, was a member of the Islamic Jihad’s military wing, the Al Quds Brigade.

But a top Islamic Jihad spokesman, Mohammed Hindi, said a local branch had acted without authority in planning and carrying out the attack, and that the group as a whole intended to abide by the truce, or hudna.

“We consider this action as an exception,” he told reporters in Gaza City. “The movement, the fighters, the brothers are strongly committed to the hudna.”

Islamic Jihad and Hamas, however, have both expressed fury over Israel’s decision, in a Cabinet vote on Sunday, to exclude its members from any prisoner release. The Palestinians are seeking the release of more than 6,000 prisoners, while the Israeli government provisions would allow for the freeing of only several hundred, at least initially.

A senior advisor to Sharon, Raanan Gissin, said the only solution to attacks like the one Monday night would be a sweeping crackdown on all the Palestinian militant groups by Abbas’ government -- or failing that, by Israel.

“Either you have a full cease-fire or you don’t,” he said. “This way, we’re going to find ourselves under constant attacks by factions they say they can’t control.

“I don’t believe the hudna is worth the paper it is written on unless the Palestinian Authority takes steps to dismantle the terrorist organizations,” Gissin said.

It took Israeli police all night to determine that the explosion in Kfar Yavetz, which occurred about 8:30 p.m., was caused by a suicide bombing and not a gas leak. National police spokesman Gil Kleiman said rescuers were initially misled by the smell of gas at the scene -- the result, he said, of gas lines being ruptured by the blast.

An inspection at dawn, when it was safe to reenter the badly damaged house, showed that the intruder, whose body was blown apart, was either wearing an explosives belt or carrying a bomb, Kleiman said.

It was not known whether he slipped into the house to try to escape detection while on his way to another target, or if his payload of explosives had detonated prematurely, though both seemed likely, investigators said.

“It’s a very weird target -- we’ve never had a suicide bomber walk into a house and blow himself up in the living room,” Kleiman said.

The village, north of Tel Aviv, lies very close to the Green Line dividing Israel from the West Bank, and the home was on the community’s edge.

The victim, Mazal Afari, was buried Monday, eulogized as a kind and religious woman who always tried to help her neighbors. Her husband was at evening prayers in the village synagogue when the attack occurred.

The Israeli defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, called the incident “very grave.”

Special correspondent Maher Abukhater in Ramallah contributed to this report.