Poll showdown thrusts Abbas into the political firing line

Amid this week's civil unrest that threatens to drag the Palestinian territories to the brink of civil war, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is emerging in the eyes of some as a forceful leader setting the agenda of Palestinian affairs.

With his bold move to order a national referendum on a document that implicitly recognises Israel, Mr Abbas, 70, has shown he's willing to become a key player in Middle East politics.

A founder of the Fatah movement that ruled Palestinian politics from 1968 until Hamas' stunning victory in legislative elections in January, Mr Abbas spent most of his career working in the shadow of Palestinian founding father Yasser Arafat. He was elected president last year after Arafat's death.

Mr Abbas cited 'my responsibility before this nation and before history' in taking his biggest decision since the signing in 1993 at the White House of the ill-fated Oslo Agreement, which launched Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He said Palestinian agreement to the document, to be voted on next month, held the key to 'saving this people from the disaster' of international isolation and worsening economic crisis that ensued from the radical Hamas movement's forming of a government in April.

But Hamas leaders say that rather than save the Palestinians, the referendum has a less noble purpose: ousting them from power they gained democratically and putting Mr Abbas' old guard Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) associates back in key positions. 'In Gaza there are already many pressures between Fatah and Hamas,' said Mahmoud Ramahi, a Hamas member of parliament. 'We think a referendum can create, can initiate a civil war in Gaza.'

Fatah-Hamas violence intensified on Monday night as Fatah militants set fire to the parliament building and cabinet offices in Ramallah after Hamas supporters sought to storm a compound in Gaza of the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security Service.

Mr Abbas said that agreement on the document, either through Fatah negotiations with Hamas, or by a yes vote in the referendum on July 26, would bring an end to the international sanctions that had left most of the Palestinian Authority's 165,000 workers unpaid for more than three months. 'We have to be rid of the huge pain that this people is living, that we are all living,' he said.