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.

Considered a "terrorist" organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, Hamas's founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state but its leaders have offered a long-term truce with Israel in return for a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

SEPARATION

The territories are only about 45 km (30 miles) apart, with Israel in between, but the fighting has highlighted just how different they are. "There is almost a complete separation between Gaza and the West Bank," Livni said.

The Islamist militants of Hamas increasingly hold sway in Gaza, while the larger West Bank is dominated by Fatah, whose leaders favor a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict.

Critics say a Western economic embargo imposed on the Palestinian Authority after Hamas came to power in March 2006, on top of the U.S. military assistance for Abbas, exacerbated tensions and fuelled Islamist militancy.

"If you have two brothers put into a cage and deprive them of basic essential needs for life, they will fight," Palestinian Foreign Minister Ziad Abu Amr said on Wednesday.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said in Washington: "Palestinians are going to have to sort out their politics and figure out which pathway they want to pursue -- the pathway toward two states living peaceably side by side or whether this sort of chaos is going to become a problem."