Israel moves to cut Palestinian ties

The government does want to keep open channels via the Palestinian president.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
JERUSALEM -- Israel is poised to sever all contacts with the Hamas-dominated Palestinian government except for ties with its moderate president, an Israeli official said Sunday.
Such a step would all but rule out prospects for peace negotiations between the two sides any time in the foreseeable future.
The recommendation to cut contacts with the Palestinian Authority, with the exception of its executive branch, came from Israel's influential "security Cabinet," which is made up of the most senior advisers to acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The full Cabinet is expected to weigh the decision in the coming week, said government spokesman Assaf Shariv.
In some senses, the Israeli move is a formality. Israel has already said it wants nothing to do with either the new Hamas-dominated Palestinian parliament that was sworn in last month or the Palestinian Cabinet made up largely of followers of the militant group.
Efforts are being made, however, to keep open a channel of communication via Mahmoud Abbas, the pragmatist-minded Palestinian Authority president who was elected separately last year and has expressed the wish to reach a peace accord with Israel.
Broke but defiant
The new Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has said his government is broke and unable to make this month's government payroll. But Hamas has refused to rescind its formal calls for Israel's destruction -- which has led the United States and the European Union to close the spigot on hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.
Israel, in a move reminiscent of the era of the late Yasser Arafat, said it would boycott any foreign diplomats who met with Hamas officials. When Arafat was alive, Israel would routinely refuse to meet with foreign dignitaries who traveled to his compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Many heeded the call to keep him diplomatically isolated.
Hamas has largely observed a yearlong period of calm, but other groups including Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade have continued attacks against Israelis.
As Israel has struck an unyielding diplomatic stance against Hamas, its army has sharply stepped up attacks against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.