Hamas takeover in Gaza would short-circuit U.S. plans

By Adam Entous - Analysis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip would deal a blow to a U.S. peace push founded on the premise Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be capable of reining in militants and Israel would embrace him as a partner.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and other senior officials said a Hamas victory in factional fighting against Abbas's secular Fatah movement would cast doubt on Abbas's ability to deliver on any agreements over a Palestinian state.

While warning of the risk of allowing Hamas to establish its own Iranian-backed mini-state on Israel's southern border, some Israeli officials said the deteriorating situation could be used by the Jewish state as leverage to get major European and Arab powers to intervene with a large international force in Gaza.

By backing calls for an international deployment that he knows few countries are clamoring to join, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may merely be laying the ground work for Israel to act unilaterally against Hamas militants in an enclave from which Israel withdrew occupying troops in 2005, the officials said.

A Hamas victory would also seem to dash Bush administration hopes that Abbas and his forces would be able to exercise security control over Gaza, a key Israeli condition for resuming serious peace negotiations.

Some Israeli and Western officials saw the Hamas-led assault as a pre-emptive strike against U.S. plans to bolster Abbas's forces for a planned crackdown on cross-border rocket attacks into Israel and smuggling of weaponry to militant groups.

U.S. President George W. Bush, who hopes for progress in his last year and half in office, will meet Olmert in Washington next week.

"If Hamas takes control of Gaza, this will be significant, not only for what happens in Gaza, but for the ability to reach agreements with (Abbas) and whether it would be possible to implement them in Gaza," Livni said in Jerusalem on Wednesday.