jerusalem | In his campaign for Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas has been walking carefully along the political tightrope leading to Election Day.
Abbas, the former prime minister who is all but certain to win the Jan. 9 election, has been working hard to appease the radically Islamist, and rather popular, Hamas, while at the same time not provoking Israeli ire.
On a recent campaign swing through the Gaza Strip, Abbas — who is favored as a relative moderate by both Israel and the United States — criticized Hamas rocket attacks on Jews as “useless” but pledged not to forcefully disarm the terrorists who fired them.
In a BBC interview, Abbas, 69, said that instead he would seek to persuade terrorist groups to agree to a cease-fire with Israel. He said that fighting among Palestinians was a “red line” that must not be crossed.
“Everything can be settled by dialogue,” he said — although under the “road map” peace plan, the Palestinian Authority agreed to confront, disarm and dismantle the terror organizations.
Abbas has urged his people to halt violence against Israel, but at the same time has spoken out in favor of the Palestinians demand for a refugee “right of return” to lands within Israel proper — a move Israel views as demographic suicide.
Abbas’ campaign strategy appears to be working: His popularity has risen slowly but steadily as the candidate of the dominant Fatah faction and the heir apparent to Yasser Arafat, who died Nov. 11.
According to the latest polling by the Palestinian Policy Institute, Abbas enjoys the support of 65 percent of voters, compared to 22 percent for Mustafa Barghouti, his nearest competitor.
Hamas, the main opposition party, isn’t opposing the elections but also didn’t present a candidate of its own because the Palestinian Authority is an outgrowth of the Oslo peace accords, which the group rejects.
Hamas won nine of 26 municipal elections in the West Bank on Dec. 24, suggesting stronger support for the terrorist group than was expected. The elections were in communities considered strongholds of Fatah, which won 14 elections. Joint Hamas/Fatah slates won two seats.
When Abbas visited Rafah last week, he was given a hero’s welcome by thousands of people carrying his portrait and another of Arafat. Militants from the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah’s terrorist cadre, carried Abbas through the crowd on their shoulders, firing guns in the air in celebration.
Abbas denounced Israel’s counterterrorist operations in Gaza, telling the crowd that “the incursions, the assassinations, the destruction of houses will not break” the Palestinian residents.
The weak link in the chain was the escalation of Palestinian violence, with repeated Kassam rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli settlements in Gaza and the town of Sderot in the Negev desert.
The Israel Defense Force then launched incursions into Gaza in an attempt to prevent the rocket and mortar attacks.
Abbas has accused Israel of deliberately trying to undermine the election by launching military operations in the Gaza Strip.
“It is true that there are some issues regarding rockets, which are useless, but in return there is a grave, a very grave Israeli escalation,” he said.
He declared that the Palestinians would not back down until a Palestinian state had been created with Jerusalem as its capital.
Renewing a call for a cease-fire with Israel, Abbas said rocket attacks against Israelis were counterproductive because they drew Israeli retaliation. Abbas didn’t call for such attacks to stop, but said Israel uses them as an excuse to launch reprisal raids, which hinder the election campaign.