As its funding dries up, its offices in Arab countries are shut down and its leaders feel the threat of Israeli assassination, the militant Hamas movement is trying to find its way to a truce with Israel.
While Palestinians see it as a face-saving way out of their violent uprising, many Israelis suspect the cease-fire contemplated by Hamas is a temporary one designed to let it regroup and renew its violent campaign.
But more is at stake than just a truce. In his talks with Hamas, the largest opposition group, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is promising it some say in his government's decisions.
A genuine truce would be crucial for getting started on the "road map," the peace plan backed by the Bush administration. The plan has got off to a shaky start, with Israel moving slowly to dismantle the first of dozens of West Bank settlement outposts.
Truce efforts are brittle, despite optimism by Palestinian officials, the intense involvement of Egyptian mediators and the support of much of the world.
Since violence erupted in September 2000, several high-profile attempts have crumbled, and Hamas has continued violence throughout the current talks -- on Friday claiming a West Bank shooting that killed an Israeli-American motorist.
The success of peacemaking may well hang on a legal concept dating to the birth of Islam: a hudna, or a truce of a fixed duration, usually between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Egyptians are proposing a six-month truce.
The idea is steeped in Islamic history -- Prophet Mohammed first negotiated a hudna with rivals in Mecca in 628 -- and allows Hamas, an Islamic fundamentalist movement, to negotiate without losing face.
Israeli skeptics say a hudna implies the Muslim side can break it off at any time, a claim denied by Palestinian scholars.
Hamas, founded in 1987, has repeatedly walked away from Egyptian-sponsored cease-fire talks in recent months, but Palestinian Authority officials believe that this time an agreement is near, mainly because of mounting international pressure on the group.
Since the end of the Iraq war, under pressure from Washington, Hamas offices in Syria have been shut and funding from Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, is drying up, though it hasn't stopped entirely. The European Union is considering declaring the political wing of Hamas a terrorist organization, eliminating the Continent as an important source of money.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday branded Hamas an "enemy of peace." He said the group's social services network of clinics, schools and kindergartens -- a major source of its popularity -- is being used to launder charitable donations and must be targeted as well. "That is the message we are taking to our friends around the world," he said.
Israel has sent the sternest warning, trying to kill a Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in a missile strike last week, and saying it considers all top officials in the group to be legitimate targets.
"All these [reasons] have come to a head," said Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi. Hamas needs legitimacy, she said, and can find it in Abbas, who, though not elected, has the Palestinian parliament's endorsement.
Abbas also badly needs a truce.
Without it, the "road map" on which he has pinned his political survival will likely go nowhere.
Over the weekend, the Palestinian leader asked Israel to halt military strikes for a week to allow him to clinch the deal with Hamas, a senior Palestinian official said.
To sweeten the offer, Abbas has also revived the idea of a "unified national leadership" -- an umbrella group of all Palestinian factions, including Hamas. However, Abbas has been vague on whether the forum would have real power.
The potential participants in the unified leadership have already agreed on a joint goal -- a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and traditionally Arab east Jerusalem.
Palestinian officials say that in the truce talks, Hamas has agreed -- as a tactical step -- to support creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but has made it clear that its final goal remains the destruction of the Jewish state.
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