Alarm bells in Palestine

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What's next? This is the question on the mind of all Palestinians, and for now the answer is unclear. The public has been promised a referendum, but should that promise be realised the consequences may be dire. In the foreword of his book about the Oslo Accords, President Mahmoud Abbas recounts how he sat in a plane, heading to Washington, wondering if the agreement he was about to sign would give his nation the homeland they deserve or just the opposite. Now that President Abbas has set a date for the referendum on the Prisoners' Document, one wonders what he's thinking now.

These are difficult times. The president has said that he would resign unless the referendum goes ahead. The resignation of Abbas would be nothing short of disastrous. It would create a constitutional vacuum that the parliamentary speaker, a Hamas member, would have to fill -- bad news for Fatah and perhaps worse for Hamas.

Despite its rhetoric, the US doesn't want the Palestinians to find a way out of this crisis. The US doesn't care about the Prisoners' Document. Its only interest is to foment Palestinian strife. President Abbas must know that. He became prime minister thanks to US support, and yet it was US support that robbed him of much of his domestic popularity. President Abbas knows that the Palestinian public hates taking orders from the Americans.

Israel and the US are not interested in a peace deal with the Palestinians. Anything they say about peace is lip service. Abbas had been president for a whole year before Hamas came to power, and yet he wasn't offered a peace deal. He wasn't offered anything, not even a perfunctory meeting with Israeli leaders.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and several other factions are set against the referendum. Hamas says the referendum is a way to get around the legitimacy of its parliamentary status. For what it's worth, this view is shared by others abroad -- even the notorious Ayman Al-Zawahiri. For the first time ever, the prisoners in Israeli jails are being criticised by some of their compatriots. That's how controversial this matter has become.

Fatah and Hamas are on a collision course. Were the referendum not to happen, the consequences could be grave. Yet if the referendum takes place, the loser is likely to be sour and chaos will be inevitable. That's the last thing the Palestinians or their neighbours need or want. Only Israel would be pleased, for chaos would give it opportunity to implement its unilateral plans for the West Bank.

How can the Palestinians emerge from the current debacle? For starters, the Palestinians should avert confrontation at any cost. They should realise that the battle for internal reconciliation is even more important than the battle with Israel. Everyone should make concessions, for without national reconciliation the Palestinians don't stand a