Mahmoud Abbas

JERUSALEM - Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister favored by the Bush administration and Israel as an alternative to Yasser Arafat and as an agent of Middle East peace, plans to announce today that he is resigning, four senior Palestinian officials said last night. Late last night, some Palestinian officials were trying to persuade Abbas to change his mind. He has previously threatened to quit, without following through. But associates of Abbas said he had concluded that there was no other way besides resigning to break what has become a crippling cycle of confrontation and compromise over the extent of his powers with Arafat and other leaders of the dominant Fatah movement.

WASHINGTON -- With a rhetorical nod toward "a more hopeful vision" of freedom and prosperity in the Middle East, President Bush opened a peace conference last night aimed at spurring a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. "We share a common goal - two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security," Bush told conference participants on the eve of today's daylong session at the U.S. Naval Academy campus in Annapolis. Achieving peace "requires difficult compromises," he said at a State Department dinner.

ARLINGTON, Va. - President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair - both stalwarts in urging the United Nations to live up to its resolutions on Iraq - changed the subject for a moment last week by announcing their support for a "road map" they say can bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The announcement was timed to help Mr. Blair's falling political support, but the "road map" won't bring peace because it has been created with the wrong political coordinates - that what Israel does or does not do affects the behavior of Palestinian terrorists.

UNITED NATIONS -- The Bush administration expressed support yesterday for the efforts by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to establish a national unity government with Hamas, but said the United States would continue to withhold aid from the Palestinian Authority. Washington's European allies have been pushing President Bush to engage more fully in peace efforts in the Middle East. An announcement yesterday by the four powers of the so-called quartet that have been working to promote peace negotiations - the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations - that they support Abbas' efforts came as part of talks on the periphery of the General Assembly.

NOW THE difficult work begins for Mahmoud Abbas. After handily winning the Palestinian presidency Sunday, Mr. Abbas has to transform his victory with 62 percent of the vote into a platform for reform and change. And he will require significant help from the United States, Europe and Israel to carry out that goal with the aim of restarting peace talks. Mr. Abbas is in a precarious spot - he has to try to effect substantive change without controlling the levers of change. Palestinians who chose Mr. Abbas as the successor to the late Yasser Arafat want and deserve relief from the harsh restrictions of Israel's occupation, which has intensified in the four years since Palestinian militants unleashed a scourge of suicide bombers and rocket attacks against the Jewish state.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- A fierce gunbattle erupted yesterday outside the Palestinian parliament building between rival Palestinian security forces, killing one man, wounding about a dozen people and deepening the sense of anarchy gripping the Gaza Strip. Passers-by scattered in panic as gunmen - some of them belonging to a new Hamas-led police force and others to a unit loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas - crouched against graffiti-covered walls and behind parked cars, squeezing off rounds from their automatic rifles and firing rocket-propelled grenades in one another's direction.

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh cut short a visit abroad yesterday after gunmen killed a judge from his Hamas movement on the fourth straight day of factional violence in the Gaza Strip. The fighting among Palestinians came as Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian through the Israel-Gaza border fence, the first killing in the territory by Israeli forces since a cease-fire began 18 days ago. A Hamas statement accused the Fatah Party - led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - of sending a police death squad to ambush Judge Bassam Fara on his way to work.

JERUSALEM - Amid a flaring crisis in Palestinian leadership, Israel renewed its demands yesterday for a diplomatic freeze - and the possible removal - of Yasser Arafat. Traveling to Britain to meet with Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon described himself as a supporter of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas - and renewed his familiar calls for Arafat's isolation. In Jerusalem, a senior Israeli administration source said that Israel has complained to the United States that Arafat has tampered with peace negotiations and that his "role and status" must be re-examined.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - In this Christmas season of hopes and fears, the little town of Bethlehem finds itself suspended somewhere between the two. With lamplight glowing softly on ancient stones and incense's musty fragrance penetrating the damp winter chill, Palestinian Christians, foreign dignitaries and a smattering of tourists celebrated midnight Mass last night in the basilica built on the spot where tradition says Jesus was born. The holiday - marked by its usual disorienting Holy Land melange of army roadblocks and candlelight carols, twinkling lights and olive-drab armored vehicles - has seen some tentative cause for optimism this year: the easing of day-to-day violent conflict with Israel, coupled with greater Palestinian aspirations to democracy in the wake of Yasser Arafat's death.

Past efforts at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have failed for multiple reasons, chief among them the issue of Jerusalem. And while the leaders gathering in Annapolis have agreed not to agree about the holy city's fate for now, it will likely be the unbridgeable divide in the follow-up negotiations. As Madeleine K. Albright noted, "If Jerusalem were just a real estate issue, we could have dealt with it long ago." Jerusalem is hardly a real estate issue. It is at the heart of the Israel-Arab impasse, for it relates fundamentally to history, theology and national identity.