Analysis: Sharon, Abbas, had not bad year

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- By coincidence Israelis and Palestinians are this week observing the holiest days of the year at the same time. Jewish people began celebrating Rosh Hashanah, the New Year -- 5766 in the Jewish calendar - with services Monday. On Tuesday Muslims marked the start of Ramadan, a month of fasting and good works. The twin feasts happen to coincide with a period of lessened tension in which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could call Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to wish him "a happy and successful new year," and Sharon reciprocated by wishing Abbas a good Ramadan. More important they agreed to reschedule a postponed meeting before the Palestinian leader leaves for his talks with President Bush in Washington on Oct 20.

Though the common tendency is to look on the dark side of Middle East developments, the past year was - on balance - a good one for both leaders. Sharon's plan to end Israel's presence in Gaza was carried out with skill and without the violence that many had predicted. The "Israel street" is satisfied; and Sharon has successfully fought off the latest attempt to unseat him by his arch rival in the ruling Likud party, Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu.

In January, Mahmoud Abbas, who is also known by his Palestine Liberation Army nom de guerre Abu Mazen, was elected president of the Palestinian Authority to succeed Yasser Arafat, who died on Nov 11, 2005. The first Palestinian presidential election with multiple candidates (seven of them) went without a hitch, ending an era of autocratic rule and the installation of a fledgling democracy for the Palestinian people. Last week, Abbas's Fatah ruling party, the political wing of the Palestine Liberation Organization, won 55 municipal councils in elections held in 104 West Bank towns and villages, and the rival Hamas movement took clear control of 13.

This is far from the swath some analysts anticipated that Hamas, the popular Islamist militant organization responsible (by its own admission) for suicide car bombs and other attacks against Israelis, would cut through the Palestinian territory. Abbas, a canny politician, has doubtless taken note of the warning signals embedded in the overall picture. 1) Voting in Gaza, the perceived Hamas stronghold, has been postponed until December to give everyone time to organize both the elections, and to campaign; 2) in large urban areas Hamas tended to do better than Fatah, which fared well in more rural voters; 3) Hamas' participation in the municipal elections has helped to pinpoint its support -- hitherto only surmised -- at a round one-third of Palestinian voters.

The Abbas-Sharon meeting was called off because Hamas reneged on a commitment not to resort to violence following the Israeli withdrawal and began lobbing their home-made rockets from Gaza into Israel. The Israelis responded with five days of air strikes and artillery fire. On Tuesday, Fatah and Hamas representatives meeting in Cairo under Egyptian auspices agreed to halt attacks on Israeli territory.

The Hamas rocket attacks coincided with a vote in the governing Likud forced by Netanyahu to move the election of the party leadership forward five months to November. Netanyahu was banking on party unhappiness with last month's Gaza pullout involving the dismantling of 21 Jewish settlements in the Strip: losing the vote would have spelled the beginning of the end for Ariel Sharon. But the prime minister won the day by, in effect, threatening the nuclear option: he vowed to quit the party if he lost. Faced with the danger of a split the 3,000 members of the Likud central committee voted in his favor by a majority of 104. The close result was a clear indication of how much Sharon's break with Likud's commitment to the settlements policy has cost him in party support. By contrast recent polls have shown that he enjoys strong public backing over Gaza. Netanyahu, who not for the first time appears to have overestimated his own political strength, knows that he has lost his best chance to oust Sharon.

As Mahmoud Abbas begins his month of day-long fasting and prayer his prayers may well focus on Hamas making a transition from armed militant organization to political party. He has called for militant groups not to carry weapons or to wear masks in public, but this is still only being honored in the breach. On Sunday one Palestinian policeman and two civilians died in an confrontation between armed Hamas members and police trying to disarm them. A police spokesman said Hamas was attempting to take control of a police station.

Abbas called the clashes a "catastrophe." He said, "It's no longer necessary to carry weapons in Gaza...The only people wearing masks in the streets are those suspected of criminal intent."