Palestinian leadership split as Israel attacks Gaza

Efforts to keep the Middle East peace process on track were facing an uphill struggle yesterday amid continuing violence in Gaza and a fresh crisis in relations between Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority chairman, and Abu Mazen, the Prime Minister.

Shaul Mofaz, Israel's Defence Minister, raised the prospect of a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip, in addition to a growing air campaign to assassinate Hamas militants.

Before his warning, an eight-year-old Palestinian girl was reported by Palestinian security and medical sources to have been killed by an Israeli tank shell while riding her bicycle near her home in the Gaza city of Khan Younis.

In an another incident, an Israeli truck driver was shot and wounded by a Palestinian gunman at the Jewish settlement of Rafiah Yam in the southern Gaza Strip. Hamas swiftly claimed responsibility.

Mr Mofaz said: "We always have the option of a ground operation in Gaza. We will exercise it when we decide it is right to do so."

In a helicopter missile strike on Saturday, Israeli forces killed two Hamas members in a van near the al-Bureij camp in central Gaza, including Abdullah Aqel, a senior leader of its armed wing. The attack took to 13 the number of Palestinians - including 10 militants - killed in helicopter strikes since a Hamas suicide bomber killed 21 people on a bus in Jerusalem on 19 August.

The Israeli government has made clear that it is aiming its attacks at Hamas militants at all levels, not just the leaders. But military analysts fear a ground incursion could cause much heavier Palestinian and Israeli casualties

Israeli security sources said that Aqel, 37, was behind recent rocket attacks on southern Israel. On Thursday, one of these hit the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon with a makeshift Qassam rocket - though causing no casualties. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, said yesterday: "Ashkelon will not become the front line - neither Ashkelon nor any other place,"

Nabil Amr, the Palestinian Information Minister, said the al-Bureij attack destroyed any chance for a resumption of talks with Israel, and called on the United States to intervene to halt the cycle of violence.

Meanwhile the Palestinian Legislative Council postponed until Thursday a meeting scheduled for today after what Palestinians described as dip-lomatic pressure from Washington to shore up Abu Mazen's position. Israel Radio reported yesterday that American officials had told the Palestinian leadership that if Abu Mazen's government fell, the US would withdraw its support for the road-map and an independent Palestinian state.

In the latest dispute between the chairman and his Prime Minister, officials loyal to Mr Arafat foiled an attempt at the weekend by Abu Mazen to implement his appointment of Sakher Bassaiso as the head of a body employing PA civil servants. Mr Bassaiso decided not to turn up to the office of the general personnel council in Gaza City after armed members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade occupied it.

Although a majority of the Legislative Council is now said to back Mr Arafat rather than Abu Mazen, a leading Palestinian analyst, Dr Ali Jarwabi of Bir Zeit University, predicted that because of American pressure there would not now be a Council vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister.

But amid reports that a compromise could be patched up by Thursday, he warned that American and Israeli efforts to support Abu Mazen and sideline Mr Arafat were bolstering the latter, given the growing Palestinian disillusionment with the peace process.