By Akiva Eldar; Ha'aretz , 09.06.06

On Sunday, a long convoy stopped at the entrance to the bridal shop on Manara Street in central Ramallah. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) arrived, accompanied by a brigade of bodyguards and surrounded by a herd of journalists. The high-ranking visitor expressed an interest in the wedding business in the big city. "Business is very slow," said the shop owner. Whereas the reporters wrote, "People are not getting married. They don't even have money for food."

Abu Mazen did not have to explain why the voices of bride and bridegroom are not being heard in the streets of Ramallah. Every Palestinian child knows why the donors divorced the PA and took away Dad's wages. The aides and the spokesmen returned to the Muqata satisfied. For the first time since Hamas threw them out of the attractive offices and took away the keys of the official limousines, some color has returned to the cheeks of Fatah party hacks.

They scent elections. The boss, an avowed hater of the media, is beginning to cooperate - even going into the street and shaking the hands of passersby. Usually he does not waste his time on public relations, nor on strategic discussions and long-term plans. For the most part, he operates from day to day, solving one crisis and waiting for the next. The prisoners' document and the plan for a referendum are like a shot of adrenalin for the man who was far more outstanding as Yasser Arafat's No. 2 than as Ismail Haniyeh's No. 1. Usually, Abu Mazen comes to his office at 10 A.M., goes home for a siesta at 2 P.M., and returns at 5 P.M. for four to five hours. In recent days the lights in the Muqata seem to be burning longer. After many months of mourning, something seems to be happening there.

Abu Mazen was 13 years old when his parents fled from Safed northward, to Syria, where he completed his bachelor's degree in law at Damascus University. In the 1980s he studied for a doctorate in Russia. In those places, they did not teach him how to build democratic institutions and how to introduce political reforms. On the other hand, he learned from the Bolsheviks how to eliminate rivals, suspect ambitious young people and avoid change. Even after the Palestinian public voted en masse against the corrupt ministers and the hedonistic party old guards, Abu Mazen continues to pay them salaries, and prefers their company to that of the young guards of the party. Thus, instead of rehabilitating and improving Fatah's image, he is concentrating on destroying the Hamas government and slinging mud at the rival organization.

Yasser Abed Rabo, of the Geneva Initiative, spent weeks in the Muqata in an attempt to convince Abu Mazen to seize the initiative from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and from Hamas. His media advisers joined the recommendation and suggested he inform the world that the PA chair wants to begin negotiations on the basis of the Clinton outline or the Geneva Initiative. Everyone agreed that the exchange of verbal blows with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, the conflict over control of the border crossings and the security forces, and the economic boycott - each one of these and all of them together - were leading to an inevitable clash. The advisers said that a political initiative that would force the Americans to pressure Israel to part from the "convergence plan" would enable the Palestinians to conduct the conflict on their home court.

Scoring more points

Abu Mazen, as is his wont, hesitated, deliberated, was evasive and stuck with the Arab League peace proposal. That revolutionary decision of March 2002 has become his trademark, and he has difficulty exchanging it for a new formula. Israel continued to ignore him, the United States remained silent and Europe was evasive. But this time, Abu Mazen's hesitation - some say weakness - has paid off, and then some. Marwan Barghouti and his fellow prisoners did his work for him. Abu Mazen could not have found better friends than the heroes of the struggle against the occupation. All the public opinion polls indicate that the release of the prisoners in Israeli jails is the most important issue in the eyes of the Palestinian public.

And in fact, the very day the National Reconciliation Document - dubbed the "prisoners' document" - was published, it caused a rift between Hamas members on the inside and those on the outside. Had Abu Mazen or Fatah signed such a document, Hamas would have torn it to shreds. But it is hard to accuse prisoners serving life sentences of defeatism. A large percentage of them are from Hamas, young people who gave up the best years of their freedom for their people.

The differences of opinion surrounding the document's wording have deepened the rift between Hamas in the territories and Hamas in Damascus, between Hamas in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. The document cuts across party lines and heralds the possibility of a big bang - the establishment of a Palestinian Kadima, which instead of unilateral moves will present an outline for negotiations over a final status agreement. A sweeping victory in a national referendum on support for the document - an initiative dramatically announced by Abu Mazen in the context of the "national dialogue" meetings - could provide him with a political infrastructure for establishing a pragmatic national unity government.

According to a telephone survey conducted by a U.S. research institute in cooperation with a Swiss institute, if the referendum had been held this week, Abu Mazen's victory would have been assured. The findings of the survey, which were published in the East Jerusalem daily Al Quds, indicate that 85 percent of the public supports the new initiative. It caused support for Fatah to jump to 45 percent, an increase of 11 percent over the previous survey. On the other hand, support for Hamas declined from 42 percent to 29 percent. There are signs that, as in the case of the Israeli Pensioners' Party, many Hamas voters - those who wanted to protest against Fatah rule - never imagined that their votes would bring the party into the government.

According to the survey, the referendum initiative has already caused a significant improvement in Abu Mazen's status. The president enjoys the support of 62 percent, compared to 38 percent who support Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh (before the initiative it was: Haniyeh 49 percent, Abu Mazen 51 percent). The next finding is no less important: Abu Mazen's proposal to bring the document to a public referendum enjoys the support of 81 percent of the public - a rate of support that will make it difficult for the Hamas faction in parliament to cause the National Referendum Law to fail. Among Fatah supporters, support reaches 95 percent, but 72 percent of Hamas voters and 71 percent of unidentified voters are also interested in the referendum.

The concept of two states on the basis of the 1967 lines is supported by 71 percent, and the residents of the Gaza Strip support the initiative in greater numbers than do the residents of the West Bank. There is apparently a direct relationship between the depth of economic distress and the percentage of support for a political agreement.

However, the Abu Mazen camp is warning of premature celebration. Hamas has not fallen yet, and Fatah still has not picked itself up from its fall. In the Muqata, they estimate that the victory in the referendum, Inshallah, will not be a knockout, but on points. The big question is by what margin. They know that a low voter turnout and a small gap, not to mention a loss, will play into the hands of Hamas and hasten Abu Mazen's end.

According to the constitution, on the day Abu Mazen goes home, the chair of the parliament, a Hamas man, will take his place for 60 days, and then elections will be held. It is very doubtful whether Fatah - which in four months hasn't even begun to recover from its downfall - will have time to pull itself together within two months. The Israeli security apparatus, in any case, is taking into account that the president's residence - the last bridge to the PA - will also fall into Hamas hands.

This fear did not prevent someone in the Israeli security apparatus from leaking information about the decision to enable Abu Mazen's forces to be equipped with weapons and ammunition, and to portray him as a collaborator with Israel. The members of the previous administration in Ramallah rubbed their eyes when they saw senior Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad explaining on television how essential this move is to Israel's security. They recall that on the eve of the disengagement, when former defense minister Shaul Mofaz hinted in a moment of "weakness" that he would be willing to consider the idea, Gilad was the one who took the wind out of his sails. Israeli reservations about the " ' Document" and its presentation as "extremist" actually benefit Abu Mazen.

The Americans knew, too

Abu Mazen can assume that the day after the referendum, Olmert will not miss the opportunity to throw in his face the paragraphs calling for a continuation of "opposition to the occupation" (mainly in the West Bank), or to wave the magic words "the right of return." Even MK Yossi Beilin (Meretz) finds it difficult to swallow those paragraphs. But in his situation, and primarily in light of Fatah's situation, Abu Mazen does not dare touch the delicate fabric woven by Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti and senior Hamas prisoner Abdel Khaleq al-Natsheh. In fact, what Olmert says, or how U.S. President George W. Bush reacts, is not so important to him. He has no expectations of Javier Solana of the European Union, who will be coming this week from Brussels for a visit. The Prisoners' Document is designed first and foremost for internal consumption, to catch Hamas with its pants down.

Had former prime minister Ariel Sharon known that the Palestinian prisoners would some day be the ones threatening to destroy the "there is no partner" status that he constructed for Abu Mazen with so much effort, he would not have instructed then-minister of public security, Gideon Ezra, to allow Barghouti to pull the political strings from his cell in Hadarim prison. This tradition is continuing in the Olmert government, perhaps from inertia. Had the new minister, Avi Dichter, been interested in preventing the prisoners' initiative, as the former head of the Shin Bet security services he would certainly have known how to prevent such a move.

We can assume that Dichter's friends in the Shin Bet reported to Olmert that the Palestinian president made sure to let the Americans in on the secret. Twenty-four hours before he presented the Hamas leaders with the ultimatum regarding the national referendum, Abu Mazen met with the U.S. Consul-General in Jerusalem, Jack Wallace. He informed the American diplomat, who probably reported to Washington immediately. His colleagues at the State Department recommended to American reporters that they not get carried away by the "convergence plan" joy of their Israeli colleagues and by their enthusiasm at the cheers in Congress. They knew that the "there is no partner" label that Sharon worked so hard to pin on Abu Mazen is in danger.