Palestinian Authority

NUSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip - The execution-style killing this week of a senior Palestinian police chief has touched off a violent struggle between the ruling Palestinian Authority and the radical militant group Hamas for control of Gaza. Street clashes have left four protesters dead. Yesterday, Hamas appeared to have the upper hand. The local blue-uniformed police were nowhere to be seen. Worried about being attacked, they had gone underground. Street corners throughout Gaza were manned by green-vested members of the state police force, roughly equivalent to the National Guard, dressed in camouflaged flak jackets and cradling assault weapons.

JERUSALEM - Farmers from the Jewish settlements of the Gaza Strip signed an agreement yesterday to sell most of their greenhouses to a private international fund, which in turn will hand them over to the Palestinian Authority. The deal, reached just three days before the Israeli evacuation of the 21 settlements of Gaza is to begin, aims to preserve the settlements' primary agricultural asset for future Palestinian use. That could provide the impoverished territory with a much-needed economic boost after the handover.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The street is quiet. Shoes click through the courtyard; the metal door opens. Gunfire from clan fighting echoes from alleys near the sea, but that is someone else's battle. Karam Tahar has his own struggles as he hides in the shade of his living room, a man caught on the wrong side in a dangerous city. There are thousands of Palestinians like him. The recent bloodshed that swept through the Gaza Strip left Tahar's political party, Fatah, defeated by Hamas, an Islamic militant group that now controls the battered territory and its 1.5 million inhabitants.

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.

ISRAEL'S PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu needs to ponder the implications of his efforts to rewrite the Oslo peace accords signed by his predecessors, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. For if any government takes it upon itself to renege on past solemn commitments, how can it hope that other nations will be willing henceforth to negotiate in good faith?Mr. Netanyahu's greater obligation is, of course, the safety and security of his people. If he believes the agreements should be formally renounced, he should say so -- and do it. Instead, he declares his allegiance to the Oslo accords and then demands "adjustments" or takes actions that are inflammatory to the Palestinians and detrimental to the authority of their leader, Yasser Arafat.

JERUSALEM -- In its first concrete response to the emergence of a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, Israel will delay handing over customs and tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinians pending a government decision on whether to continue the transfers, a Cabinet official said yesterday. The transfers of about $50 million a month are a crucial source of funding for the Palestinian Authority, which is effectively bankrupt and has run out of money to pay its employees, according to Palestinian and U.S. officials.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - The new chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas, met here last night with militant leaders as he began trying to solve the intricate political puzzle that Yasser Arafat left at his death. The meeting came at a moment of high tension among and within Palestinian factions. Politicians, security chiefs and militants are vying to preserve or increase their power after the death last week of Arafat, by far the most popular and influential Palestinian figure.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli Army Col. Ilan Paz stood in front of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's battered compound yesterday and casually chatted with soldiers training their assault rifles on what was once a proud symbol of Palestinian self-rule. Arafat was holed up with his aides on the second floor of one of the few buildings still standing, just 100 yards away, but from the outside it appeared that the sprawling city-block-size complex was deserted. Not a person could be seen; not a single shot was fired by Arafat's elite presidential guard.

HEBRON, West Bank -- The boys of Hebron fly their kites amid the stones of the dead.In the cemetery of this troubled West Bank city, Antar Bardewi tugs on the string of a kite he has fashioned from a plastic bag, hand-lashed sticks and a tail of tattered rags. He leaps from one burial crypt to the next, coaxing the stubborn kite higher into the sky. He is a young man of 15 amusing himself with a child's toy.Beyond the cemetery wall, other young men -- some not much older than Antar -- lean into the windows of cars and ask the Palestinian drivers for their papers.

Over the strenuous objections of the U.S. and Israel, the United Nations General Assembly voted today to grant nonmember observer status to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. The U.N. action, which was widely anticipated, was largely a symbolic move that does nothing to change the situation on the ground or lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. But it does raise international pressure on Israel to show it is serious about reaching a negotiated settlement, while allowing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to claim a historic advance in his people's quest for global recognition.