Abu Mazen

RAMALLAH, West Bank - In their moderate ideas and their bland pronouncements, Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qureia, the two Palestinian officials who seem the leading candidates to succeed Yasser Arafat, are often described as interchangeable. If these men inherit Arafat's authority, Palestinians will find that soft-spoken, button-down bureaucrats dressed in suits that match their gray hair have replaced a revolutionary famous for his pistol and green fatigues. Upon Arafat's death, the Palestinian constitution requires elections to be held within 60 days.

KFAR SABA, Israel - Hours after a Palestinian prime minister who says he is determined to end violence formed his first Cabinet, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at a train station here yesterday, killing himself and an Israeli security guard. It was a small-scale attack by Israeli standards and was unlikely to prompt a severe retaliatory strike by the army. But it sent a powerful message to both sides that one teen-ager with a bomb hidden under an overcoat can still dictate the agenda.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The man who calls himself Abu Musab summons the faithful to prayer. Five times a day his voice bellows from speakers atop a mosque minaret. He says he is a man of God, but Israeli authorities would say he is not a man of peace. Abu Musab, 35, is a member of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a faction responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis at the hands of suicide bombers. Now, he is waiting for Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip to decide whether to call a cease-fire, as required by a U.S.-backed peace initiative.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Declaring that the armed conflict with Israel had run its course, Mahmoud Abbas was installed yesterday as the first Palestinian prime minister and his new Cabinet was approved by Palestinian lawmakers. The legislators' endorsement of Abbas, widely known as Abu Mazen, cleared an important hurdle for the unveiling of a U.S.-backed peace plan known as the "road map." Hours later, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to a bar along the beachfront promenade in Tel Aviv, adjacent to the U.S. Embassy.

JERUSALEM -- After Hamas' swift and humiliating defeat of rival Fatah forces in the Gaza Strip this week, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas woke up yesterday as president of a broken kingdom with his reputation seemingly sealed as weak and ineffective. "A featherless chick," one commentator in the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv dubbed Abbas after his military failure against Hamas. Even so, as Israeli and U.S. officials tried to navigate the realities created by Hamas' victory, they pointed to Abbas as the key player in their efforts to back Palestinian moderates, sideline Hamas and perhaps save their failed plans to create a Palestinian state.

GAZA CITY, GAZA STRIP -- It has been weeks since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, but Abdul Hadi Abu Hadaf still gets a thrill throwing open his second-story window each morning. For five years, Israeli forces ordered the 56-year-old farmer to keep his window shut, afraid that Palestinian snipers would use his house to fire on Jewish settlers in nearby Gush Katif. Israeli soldiers also plowed under his olive groves, orange trees and date palms to make space for a watchtower and parking spaces for two tanks.

NABLUS, West Bank - In the nearly two years since Ghazi and Seham Jarwan's 17-year-old son Khamis blew himself up in a small grocery store in a Tel Aviv suburb, killing a 42-year-old father, their home has become a memorial to their son's life. A life-size poster of their son greets visitors in the doorway, and photos from his toddler and schoolboy years hang on the living room wall. More posters of him plaster the alleys here in the West Bank's largest city, where Khamis Jarwan is hailed as a hero, an inspiration for others to follow, his father says.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was wounded yesterday when Israeli helicopters fired missiles at his vehicle, killing two people and dimming prospects for a U.S.-backed peace plan. Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, one of six founders of Hamas, which opposes any peace agreement with Israel, narrowly escaped the two Apache helicopters that chased his zigzagging Mitsubishi SUV along a residential street, firing missiles along the way. Rantisi jumped from his vehicle after one missile just missed and another hit the hood.