Today's Situation

KIDNAPPINGS, OVERTURES AND ASSESSMENTS, December 19, 2006

The two-day old ceasefire between rival Palestinian factions was in danger of total collapse on Tuesday, as Fateh and Hamas militants continued to clash in the Gaza Strip.

The worst incident occurred in the early hours of the morning. According to Haaretz, one Hamas gunman was killed and six others were wounded in a fierce exchange of fire inside the compound of Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

Hours later, a firefight broke out near a base of the Fatah-controlled General Intelligence agency, when Hamas gunmen fired two mortar shells at the compound near the Shatti refugee camp. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the second incident.

Gunmen from Fateh and Hamas had exchanged gunfire in Gaza City into the late hours of Monday further straining a shaky ceasefire between the rival Palestinian movements.

Also Monday, several Fateh officials were abducted by Hamas gunmen, only to be released several hours later. The most senior official kidnapped was Sufyan Abu Zaida, a former Palestinian cabinet minister, whom Hamas said it freed as 'a gesture of goodwill, despite the fact a leading Hamas figure remained a captive of Fateh.' Fatah sources said Hamas had threatened Abu Zaida would only be released in exchange for Emad Deeb, a Hamas official snatched earlier in northern Gaza. In total, 11 Hamas members were reportedly abducted by Fateh on Monday.

In the latest incident, Ynet, the website of Yedioth Ahronoth, says that Palestinian sources in Gaza reported a failed assassination attempt against Governor Ismail Abu Shammala, who is affiliated with Fateh. According to the report, gunmen opened fire at the governor's vehicle at around noon Tuesday.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday that the early presidential and parliamentary elections which he called for in a speech on Saturday would go ahead, despite the upsurge in violence.

Israel Radio reports that Abbas is due to travel to Gaza today, adding that a spokesman for Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh claimed that regional Arab leaders were trying to organize a meeting between Abbas and Haniyeh, but had so far been unsuccessful.

According to Arutz 7, Israeli security services do not believe that these sporadic clashes will deteriorate into a civil war in the Palestinian Authority. A defense establishment insider said that the battles will not likely develop into a war simply because many families that are split between Fateh and Hamas. IDF intelligence sources believe that the two factions will eventually agree to new elections.

Arutz 7 adds that a new internal Palestinian Authority ceasefire plan is to be put on the table by Wednesday. The plan is the work of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the People's Party, and it calls for renewed talks among all PA factions leading to a unity government within two weeks.

Syria and Iran continue to dominate much of the Israel press. Ynet and The Jerusalem Post report on a story in Al-Arabiya which claims that President Bashar Assad has forwarded a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in which he offers to renew peace talks without preconditions or time limit. According to the report, the letter was given to Olmert by German officials and details an offer made by Assad to minimize the influence of Hamas leaders not present in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank.

Israel, nonetheless, seems intent on toeing the American line and continuing to ignore the Syrian overtures. Indeed, Haaretz reports that Interior Minister Roni Bar-On, who is known to oppose renewed talks with Syria, plans to accelerate the process for issuing construction permits in the Golan Heights and to channel new projects for the areas adjacent to the Syrian city of Quneitra through the planning committees under his ministry.

The annual intelligence assessment of the strategic threats facing Israel appears prominently in all four major newspapers on Tuesday morning. Haaretz highlights the assessment of Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who claims that Iran will not have a nuclear bomb before 2009 at the earliest. If this is the case, one official in Jerusalem was quoted as saying that there is plenty of time to seek a diplomatic solution to the problem. Reacting to that assessment on Tuesday, opposition leader and former PM Benjamin Netanyahu said that this was a warning, not an all-clear.

Speaking to foreign diplomats, Netanyahu said that ' Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to establish a 1,000-year Islamic Reich.' Netanyahu convened the diplomats to launch his drive to have Ahmadinejad tired in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The Jerusalem Post and Yedioth Ahronoth both focus on Dagan's claim that Damascus is 'more prepared than ever before' to take military action against Israel and that Jerusalem should not take the Syrian peace overture seriously. Maariv leads its coverage of the assessment in a similar vein, reporting that Dagan said that if Israel were to renew talks with the Syrians, it would be 'like stabbing the U.S. in the back.'

The above text was written and compiled by Simon Spungin using newpaper, radio and wire reports, in English and Hebrew.

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