Israel worries over Abbas's ability to control fighting

Occupied Jerusalem: A Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip would deal a blow to a US peace push founded on the premise that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would be capable of reining in fighting 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' ability to deliver on any agreements over a Palestinian state.

"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 occupied Jerusalem on Wednesday.

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 clamouring to join, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may merely be laying the ground work for Israel to act unilaterally against Hamas in an enclave from which Israel withdrew occupying troops in 2005, the officials said.

Striking down US plans

Some Israeli and Western officials saw the Hamas-led assault as a pre-emptive strike against US plans to bolster Abbas's forces for a planned crackdown on cross-border rocket attacks into Israel and smuggling of weaponry to groups.

Some Israeli officials say Fatah is hopelessly outgunned in Gaza and that any weapons that might be sent to the group now would fall into the hands of Hamas and be used against Israelis.