Bombing in Israel shows challenge facing Abbas

By Adam Entous - Analysis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The first Palestinian suicide bombing in a year highlighted murky divisions within President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction and its militant wing that could confound U.S. efforts to get Israel to sign a peace deal.

"The Army of Palestine", which says it is a unit of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, claimed responsibility for Monday's attack in the southern Israeli town of Dimona.

An Israeli woman, along with the suicide bomber and his accomplice, were killed.

While al-Aqsa officials in Gaza provided specific details about the operation and released a video of one of the attackers standing in front of a Fatah banner, spokesmen for the group in the occupied West Bank issued blanket denials of involvement.

Palestinian and Israeli officials said the bombing would not derail U.S.-backed peace talks between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the first in seven years to tackle so-called final status issues, including statehood borders.

But Mark Regev, Olmert's spokesman, said the bombing underscored the "primary challenge" facing Abbas to demonstrate that he can exert full control over militant groups.

"This challenge is not only coming from forces outside their political movement," Regev said. "Within the Fatah machine, there are rogue elements."

He cited a December attack, claimed by another splinter group within al-Aqsa, in which two off-duty Israeli soldiers were killed in the West Bank. Hamas and Islamic Jihad also claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Riyad al-Malki, foreign minister in Abbas's West Bank-based government, brushed aside questions about any Fatah split, saying the Dimona attackers had no connection to the group.

Olmert has vowed not to implement any peace deal until Abbas reins in militants, including those in Gaza, where Hamas routed Fatah forces in June.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Monday's attack comes just four weeks after Abbas's interior minister asserted that al-Aqsa no longer existed.

But in contrast to Hamas's unified command structure, al-Aqsa's decentralization makes it difficult to control, Palestinian and Western experts say.

Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip may have fuelled the divisions within Fatah, increasing the number of splinter groups that align themselves, at least temporarily, with Hamas. Some Fatah members in Gaza saw Abbas's government in the West Bank as complicit in the blockade.

Zakaria al-Qaq of al-Quds University said the Army of Palestine's claim of responsibility for the Dimona bombing was designed to put Abbas in a difficult position by putting a spotlight on divisions within his faction.