Abu Mazen

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat yesterday nominated a widely respected political moderate to serve as his government's first prime minister, which he said proves that he is serious about instituting reforms. Arafat named Mahmoud Abbas, widely known by his nom de guerre Abu Mazen, during a speech to the Palestine Liberation Organization's 122-member central council, which endorsed the selection. Arafat said it represents "comprehensive reform in all aspects" and answers demands made by critics, including Israel and the United States.

WASHINGTON -- Will there be a Palestinian civil war? Probably not. But a major struggle is under way that may be the biggest internal Palestinian conflict in memory, perhaps in history. On one level, the battle is between Hamas and Fatah, between Islamism and nationalism. It is also a struggle between two groups, each wanting the fruits of leadership: power, prestige, money. With the demise of unchallenged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and - no less important - with his Fatah movement's inability to gain a state because of intransigence, the way was open for the rise of Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas ordered a crackdown on street chaos yesterday after gunmen fired shots at his headquarters here late Wednesday night and then ran riot, damaging restaurants and shopping areas as police ran away. "The Palestinian Authority has taken urgent steps to re-establish security, deal with the perpetrators and protect public property," the government said, after an urgent meeting called by Abbas, known as Abu Mazen. "Units are deployed to prevent any new aggression," the statement said, promising compensation to those who suffered losses in the rioting.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Union is considering making direct payments to the moderate Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, as a way of supporting him while trying to maintain financial pressure on Hamas, the anti-Israeli political party that swept to power in elections last month. The idea was raised this week by the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, after a conference call with other members of the so-called Quartet - the United States, Russia and the United Nations - that has been promoting peace efforts between Israel and the Palestinians.

JERUSALEM - In a show of defiance to Israel and the new Palestinian government, hundreds of masked and armed Hamas fighters marched through the streets of Gaza City yesterday in a funeral procession for 12 people killed in an Israeli raid Thursday. The funeral drew thousands of Gazans, many of them calling for retaliation or chanting slogans against the first Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who took office Tuesday. Abbas, who is known as Abu Mazen, wants to restrain the armed uprising.

SURDA, West Bank -- Qadura Faris has a view from his office window that many people would envy. The Palestinian legislator looks down on green fields, villa-like houses and olive trees lining stone terraces that are carved into the jagged landscape. It would be a tranquil scene if not for all the people. A sand-swept road -- blocked to cars by dirt mounds -- is jammed with young and old, spry and infirm, trudging under a hot sun to and from an Israeli army checkpoint that divides the city of Ramallah from three dozen villages.

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip, responding to a mortar attack, fired two tank shells into a field early yesterday, killing seven Palestinians. The Israeli military insists that the shells hit the men who had fired the mortars at a Jewish settlement. But relatives of the dead, six of whom were reportedly related, said they were farm boys working in the fields. Witnesses said the boys were bystanders to an attack by Palestinian militants who slipped into the field near the village of Beit Lahiya, fired and left.

ABU DIS, West Bank - Shut out of a Middle East peace conference in Jordan on Wednesday, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat yesterday dismissed a promised Israeli concession, as skepticism on both sides and around the region vied with hopes for peace. Arafat's criticism was an implicit slap at the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been trying to demonstrate progress toward improving Palestinian life as he lobbies militant groups to lay down their arms. On Wednesday, after meeting with President Bush in the port city of Aqaba, Abbas declared that the armed Palestinian uprising against Israel "must end."

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, engulfed in a power struggle with Yasser Arafat that has helped stall a peace plan with Israel, demanded yesterday that legislators grant him more authority or risk seeing his government fall. "You entrusted me with this," Abbas told the Palestinian parliament. "Either you provide [the prime minister's post] with the capacities of power and support or you take it back." Abbas and Arafat are fighting over control of nine separate security forces, which the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map" says should be consolidated under Abbas' control so he can wrest weapons away from militant groups.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - The cafeteria at Bethlehem University is noisy with the chatter of students studying for exams, the young men and women who are the West Bank's next generation of lawyers, doctors and teachers. Harboring the optimism of college students everywhere, they want to make a difference. Next month they can vote to choose a new president of the Palestinian Authority in what might be a genuinely open, contested election - a privilege that their grandparents never had, that their parents have only glimpsed and that remains unavailable in most of the Arab world.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas ordered a crackdown on street chaos yesterday after gunmen fired shots at his headquarters here late Wednesday night and then ran riot, damaging restaurants and shopping areas as police ran away. "The Palestinian Authority has taken urgent steps to re-establish security, deal with the perpetrators and protect public property," the government said, after an urgent meeting called by Abbas, known as Abu Mazen. "Units are deployed to prevent any new aggression," the statement said, promising compensation to those who suffered losses in the rioting.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Rami Fadayel traveled yesterday from one world to another, from an Israeli prison cell to this scene in the West Bank: celebratory gunfire by Palestinian police, children waving Palestinian flags, roses from his mother, a kiss from his fiancee and a hero's welcome from hundreds of fellow Palestinians. For the 25-year-old former prisoner, it was a new day in the Middle East, and the events were repeated many times as Israel released 500 Palestinian prisoners, loading them on buses and transporting them to drop-off points in the West Bank and Gaza, where they were reunited with crowds of family and friends.

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas agreed yesterday to meet in Egypt on Tuesday along with the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, in an apparent breakthrough in relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israeli and Palestinian leaders were invited by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose aides are also trying to mediate a cease-fire among Palestinian militant groups. The meeting, to be held in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, also marks the steadily warming contacts between Israel and Egypt.

JERUSALEM - A sudden rise in Palestinian attacks from the Gaza Strip has presented the Israeli government with a difficult choice: send in the Israeli army for a confrontation with militant groups or give the days-old Palestinian government led by Mahmoud Abbas time to restore order on its own. Abbas, while offering no details yesterday, directed his security forces to end the violence in Gaza - the attacks that now involve mortars and primitive, short-range...

JERUSALEM - Israeli troops in the northern Gaza Strip, responding to a mortar attack, fired two tank shells into a field early yesterday, killing seven Palestinians. The Israeli military insists that the shells hit the men who had fired the mortars at a Jewish settlement. But relatives of the dead, six of whom were reportedly related, said they were farm boys working in the fields. Witnesses said the boys were bystanders to an attack by Palestinian militants who slipped into the field near the village of Beit Lahiya, fired and left.

EL-BIREH, West Bank - The front-runner in next month's election to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, launched his campaign yesterday, appealing to voters who worry that he might surrender core tenets of their long fight for statehood. The silver-haired, pragmatic 69-year-old reassured a hall filled with 800 supporters in a municipal building here, paying homage to Yasser Arafat and using language to please militant ears, while not repudiating previous moderate statements.

EL-BIREH, West Bank - The front-runner in next month's election to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, launched his campaign yesterday, appealing to voters who worry that he might surrender core tenets of their long fight for statehood. The silver-haired, pragmatic 69-year-old reassured a hall filled with 800 supporters in a municipal building here, paying homage to Yasser Arafat and using language to please militant ears, while not repudiating previous moderate statements.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, seeking to bolster an emerging team of Palestinian leaders, is pressing Arab and European nations to cut back diplomatic contacts with Yasser Arafat and divert the financing of Palestinian activities away from his control, administration officials said yesterday. The campaign for a global drive to undercut Arafat is one of several items on Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's agenda for his trip to the Middle East next month, the first Bush administration attempt in a year to become directly involved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - The cafeteria at Bethlehem University is noisy with the chatter of students studying for exams, the young men and women who are the West Bank's next generation of lawyers, doctors and teachers. Harboring the optimism of college students everywhere, they want to make a difference. Next month they can vote to choose a new president of the Palestinian Authority in what might be a genuinely open, contested election - a privilege that their grandparents never had, that their parents have only glimpsed and that remains unavailable in most of the Arab world.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, engulfed in a power struggle with Yasser Arafat that has helped stall a peace plan with Israel, demanded yesterday that legislators grant him more authority or risk seeing his government fall. "You entrusted me with this," Abbas told the Palestinian parliament. "Either you provide [the prime minister's post] with the capacities of power and support or you take it back." Abbas and Arafat are fighting over control of nine separate security forces, which the U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map" says should be consolidated under Abbas' control so he can wrest weapons away from militant groups.