Palestinian Authority presidential hopeful Mahmoud Abbas called for an end to violence against Israelis. “Our uprising should be social and popular in nature,” Abbas, the dominant Fatah faction’s candidate to succeed the late Yasser Arafat in Jan. 9 elections, told the London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat on Tuesday. “Resorting to arms has been harmful” to Palestinians, he said. “This should be stopped and calm restored.” Abbas has said Israeli and U.S. calls to crack down on Palestinian terrorists — as the Palestinian Authority repeatedly has committed itself to do — are unrealistic, saying that instead he hopes to integrate Hamas and a kindred terrorist group, Islamic Jihad, under the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he now heads. In a separate development, Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal told the BBC that his group had been in contact with the United States and the European Union. There was no immediate comment from Washington and Bruss! els, both of which have blacklisted Hamas as a terrorist group.
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