Abbas sets date for referendum opposed by Hamas

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, stepping up a power struggle with the Hamas-led government, announced on Saturday a July 26 referendum on a statehood proposal implicitly recognizing Israel. Hours before the moderate Palestinian leader issued his decree, Hamas formally ended a 16-month truce by firing rockets at Israel in response to the killing of seven people on a Gaza beach during Israeli shelling on Friday.

Hopes for peacemaking appeared even more remote, with Abbas and the Islamist group that defeated his Fatah faction in a January election locked in political confrontation and Hamas and Israel on a fast track to battle.

"As chairman of the PLO Executive Committee and president of the Palestinian Authority, I have decided to exercise my constitutional right and duty to hold a referendum over the document of national agreement," Abbas declared in a decree read by an aide. Hamas officials accuse Abbas of using the referendum, penned by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, to try to engineer the downfall of their government, which has struggled with a Western aid embargo and growing disorder.

The manifesto calls for a Palestinian state, alongside Israel, on all of the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. Opinion polls show most Palestinians back the proposal. Israel calls it a non-starter. Palestinians will be asked to vote "yes" or "no" on the question: "Do you agree with the document of national agreement -- the prisoner's document?", the aide said.

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