Palestinian leadership in turmoil after bombing

8.15am

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Mahmoud Abbas threatened to quit as Palestinian prime minister and offered to resign from a top Fatah body in a dispute with internal critics over peace moves with Israel, officials said on Tuesday.

Israel also stepped up pressure on Abbas, demanding he dismantle militant Palestinian groups, as mandated by a US-backed peace plan, following a suicide bombing that killed a 65-year-old Israeli woman in her home near the West Bank.

Abbas sent President Yasser Arafat a letter in which he tendered his resignation from their Fatah faction's policymaking Central Committee, the backbone of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian officials said.

The Central Committee said it rejected his resignation and Abbas' office made clear he was not quitting Fatah.

Hardline members of the Central Committee prompted the move by asking the moderate Abbas to step down as prime minister after he failed to persuade Israel to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners to bolster a "road map" to peace.

In a second letter to Arafat, Abbas asked the veteran leader and Fatah to outline their ideas of how to handle confidence-building steps the peace plan charts for both sides on a path to Palestinian statehood by 2005. "If he rejects their ideas, he will resign as prime minister," one senior official said, adding that the internal crisis prompted Abbas to postpone a meeting on peace moves slated with Sharon for Wednesday.

The suicide bombing on Monday was the first such attack since the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups and Fatah announced a ceasefire 10 days ago in a nearly three-year-old uprising for statehood.

A West Bank-based cell of Islamic Jihad said in a statement it sent the bomber to protest at Israel's refusal to free all but a few hundred of up to 8000 prisoners.

Islamic Jihad's Gaza-based leadership said it remained committed to the truce and knew nothing of the claim issued from Jenin after the attack.

Israel said on Sunday members of militant groups and prisoners who committed or orchestrated attacks on Israelis would not go free. Palestinian militants have demanded a prompt release of all prisoners to allow the truce to hold.

"We cannot release those same people whose purpose is to destroy Israel," Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel's Channel One television.

Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the suicide attack showed the ceasefire was "not worth the paper it was written on unless the Palestinians dismantle the terrorist infrastructure".

"If there is no cessation of terror and the dismantling of the terror framework, then we'll do it," said Gissin.

Abbas has sought to avoid confrontation with militant groups, fearing he could touch off a civil war.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz, holding out the prospect of military action, told reporters Israel "would continue to act against the (Islamic Jihad) infrastructure". But the hawkish Mofaz said Israel remained committed to peace efforts.

- REUTERS