Word: gaza
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...cease-fire. But Palestinian Authority prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, on whom the Bush administration is relying to deliver Palestinian compliance with the "roadmap," has made clear that he can only do so with the consent of the radical groups. Abbas has held off on accepting security responsibility for Gaza and parts of the West Bank pending a truce agreement from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa brigades of his own Fatah faction, and has said repeatedly that he has no intention of using force against those groups, for fear of sparking a Palestinian civil war that he would likely...
...Palestinian political life. While Secretary of State Colin Powell dismisses Hamas as "a handful of individuals" who must not be allowed to "blow up the roadmap," the reality is plainly more complex. Hamas is believed by Israeli security services to have fewer than 1,000 men under arms in Gaza, compared with some 50,000 on the payroll of the PA security forces. But those numbers don't explain, for example, why Abbas repeatedly and strenuously emphasizes that he has no intention of going to war on Hamas - which is exactly what the Israelis and the Bush Administration are expecting...
...avoided the taint of corruption associated with the authority in the minds of ordinary Palestinians, and the terror strikes conducted by its armed wing in Israeli cities have answered the desire for vengeance among many ordinary Palestinians, particularly in the embittered and impoverished refugee camps of Gaza. The failure of the Oslo peace process and the collapse of the PA's infrastructure as Israel bombed and reoccupied much of the West Bank and Gaza in response to Palestinian terror attacks has further enhanced Hamas's popular authority. As one Israeli writer noted this week, when PA policemen in Gaza have...
...from abroad (and the movement's terrorists obviously draw from the same coffers). Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in particular, have been putting heavy pressure on Hamas to accept a truce, and the movement's exile leadership have left the decision up to their structures in the West Bank and Gaza - a way of limiting the impact of external pressure. More importantly, Hamas is usually responsive to Palestinian public opinion. If ordinary Palestinians see in the roadmap a prospect for returning to jobs in Israel and easing some of their economic burden, Hamas can't afford to be seen...
...goes ahead, Hamas's hudna will clear the way for implementation of the first steps of Phase 1 of the roadmap, in which a cease-fire allows the Palestinian Authority to resume security control in Gaza and the West Bank city of Bethlehem. But the truce introduces an even sharper dispute on the next security steps. Israel, and the Bush administration, have warned that the roadmap requires not a tactical cease-fire by Hamas, but the systematic disarming and dismantling of the organization and other groups that have waged terror attacks...