GAZA: The newly-erupted Palestinian-Israeli violence has put the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in a difficult situation to decide how to deal with the escalation and the hardline militant groups.

Last Tuesday, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in Jerusalem, killing at least 20 Israelis, including children, and wounding about 100 others.

Right after the suicide bombing, Israel froze security talks and the planned withdrawal of Israeli troops from more West Bank cities, and imposed a general closure on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On Thursday, in revenge for Tuesday's deadly suicide bombing, Israel assassinated Ismail Abu Shanab, the No 3 figure of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas, when its helicopter gunships fired three missiles at his car in Gaza City.

The targeted killing led Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main militant groups, to declare the end of a three-month truce with Israel, which they approved on June 29.

How to deal with Palestinian militant groups, which had been opposed to any deal reached with Israel and carried out the deadly suicide bombing against Israelis, is a thorny issue during negotiations between Israel and the PNA.

Israel had repeatedly demanded the PNA dismantle the militant groups and their infrastructure, while the PNA was opposed to the request in order to avoid any internal conflicts with the hardline Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

The PNA, on the other hand, adopted a diplomatic stance toward the factions by holding talks between Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and representatives of 13 different factions to seek a ceasefire with Israel.

Finally, with the help of an Egyptian security delegation, the PNA succeeded in convincing the factions to approve a three-month suspension of all kinds of attacks against Israel, with the possibility to extend the period of ceasefire if Israel complies fully with the truce's terms.

Israel, however, kept insisting that the factions and their infrastructures must be completely eliminated, and demanded Abbas and the Palestinian Minister of Security Affairs, Mohammed Dahlan, execute its demands.

Tuesday's blast in Jerusalem gave Israel the opportunity to renew its calls for eliminating the factions that Israel refers to as "terrorist organizations."

Analyst Mahmoud Barood from Gaza said if Israel is really interested in calmness, it would never assassinate Abu Shanab and blow everything up, and it would "give the chance to the Palestinian leadership to halt Hamas and Islamic Jihad military actions against Israel."

During the past six weeks of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, Israel had pulled out its army from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank city of Bethlehem and agreed to transfer security control of four more Palestinian cities to the PNA, in an attempt to end the intifada, which broke out nearly three years ago.

After the bombing, Israel claimed that it remains the only beneficiary from the series of attacks and continuous bloodshed, especially as the timing of the blast coincided with a supposed Israeli army pullout from four Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

Israel has been delaying pulling its army out of the four cities with the excuse that a number of Palestinian militants resided at Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

(Xinhua News Agency August 26, 2003)