Israel Cuts Contact to Palestinian Authority

Mahmoud Abbas, who will be sworn in today as the Palestinian Authority president, salutes while in Ramallah. (Nasser Nasser -- AP)

JERUSALEM, Jan. 14 -- Israel suspended contacts with the Palestinian Authority on Friday over a deadly attack at a border crossing on Thursday and accused Mahmoud Abbas, scheduled to be sworn in Saturday as the new Palestinian Authority president, of not doing enough to combat terrorism since his election five days ago.

Israeli officials also accused the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank and Gaza Strip, of complicity in Thursday night's assault at the Karni border crossing between Gaza and Israel. Six Israelis -- four employees of the Israeli Ports Authority and two truck drivers -- were killed when three Palestinians blew up a door connecting the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the facility and opened fire as they burst through the opening. The gunmen were killed in the ensuing fight.

A senior Israeli official said the Preventive Security Service, one of the Palestinian Authority's principal security forces, "was to the best of our knowledge involved" in the attack.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the attackers would have had to pass through several layers of Palestinian security to reach the crossing facility. He would not specify what evidence linked the group to the attack.

Assaf Shariv, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, told the Associated Press that the attack had been launched from a Palestinian Authority base. "Abbas knows who carried out the attack," Shariv told the Reuters news agency.

Three Palestinian factions asserted joint responsibility for the strike: the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas; the Popular Resistance Committees; and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which is associated with Abbas's Fatah political movement. On Friday morning, Abbas said that neither the Karni attack nor recent Israeli military operations "benefit the peace process."

The Karni facility is a key crossing point for goods entering Gaza, which is largely isolated behind heavily fortified fences patrolled by Israeli troops. On Friday, the Israeli military closed all border crossings around Gaza for an indefinite period.

The deadly attack and the suspension of contacts, which Israeli officials said would last until Abbas showed signs he was trying to curb such violence, dampened recent optimism that Abbas's election could lead to renewed peace talks. Israelis generally welcomed the election of Abbas -- who has criticized Palestinian violence -- as president of the Palestinian Authority, succeeding longtime leader Yasser Arafat, who died two months ago.

Palestinian officials seemed stunned by Sharon's decision to sever ties on the eve of Abbas's inauguration. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was elected on Sunday, and Israeli officials had said they would give him time to try to rein in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

The Palestinians' chief negotiator with Israel, Saeb Erekat, said that when officials in Sharon's office told him they were suspending contacts, "I told them, 'I cannot accept this because Abu Mazen has not been sworn in yet. . . . He's not even president until tomorrow.'

"I told them, 'You must restore contacts and negotiations and not suspend them before they even begin. That's what the extremists want. Give him a chance.' "

The senior Israeli official said that no one expected Abbas to stop all Palestinian attacks in just four days but that he had not even begun to try. "The message is that he should start to do something about terrorism," the official said.

"He's done zero -- zero -- to stop terror attacks," the official added. "The way it's going now cannot continue."

Abbas, who has called the violence associated with the Palestinian uprising a mistake and called for it to end, has said he would seek to negotiate a cease-fire among the main Palestinian factions rather than risk civil war by attempting to forcibly disarm them.

"There's a great deal of skepticism in security circles about Abu Mazen's ability to deliver a genuine end to violence, especially how he wants to, by persuasion rather than by using force, and Sharon's action reflects that," said Yossi Alpher, an Israeli political analyst and co-founder of Bitterlemons.org, a Web site promoting Palestinian-Israeli dialogue.

Alpher said the Gaza strike was as much an attack on Abbas's authority as it was on Israel's border crossing.

"What happened last night happened under the noses of Abu Mazen's own loyal security people, and they were not able to stop it or didn't want to stop it, and Sharon is saying no contacts until you investigate this," Alpher said. "There's nothing to hinder Abu Mazen from doing what he wants. He's still free to act, but he's gotten a tough message that presumably was designed to light a fire under him."

But Palestinians said that cutting ties before Abbas had taken office was evidence that Sharon and Israel were not sincere about reopening a dialogue.

"This confirms the Palestinian point of view that there is nothing to be expected from Sharon. He wants to impose a settlement on the Palestinians, and he wants Abu Mazen to deliver that," said Ali Jerbawi, a Palestinian political analyst. "As long as Sharon does not think it's a two-way street, we're not going anywhere."