Few in Gaza rue Abbas' departure

It is people like Ayman Nahal, a burly vegetable vendor who works surrounded by the sweet smell of mangoes at the market in Gaza's dismal refugee Beach Camp only a short sprint from the Mediterranean, whom Mahmoud Abbas has failed to convince.

"This man was brought to us to bring a solution, but so far there are no solutions," said Nahal, 32, of Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, also known as Abu Mazen, as young people near him shouted out, "Abu Mazen the Jew."

"He has not brought anything new. A lot of people love Arafat more than before. Because he has correct thoughts," Nahal said. "But especially because he is under siege, like the people, like us."

If anything, the popularity of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, has soared since Israeli tanks demolished most of his headquarters in Ramallah and hemmed him inside, where he still sits after a year. With his worn olive fatigues and his passion for politics, Arafat is the ultimate symbol of Palestinian fervor and relentlessness. It also helps that he was elected to his presidential post.

Abbas, on the other hand, with his button-down suits and sour regard for pinching baby's cheeks or consoling weeping widows, draws mostly sneers. Last week, armed and masked gunmen protested his arrival at parliament.

Viewed primarily as a poor substitute for Arafat, Abbas was thought to be too quick to deal with Israel and too inept to fix problems at home, Palestinians in Gaza said. Furthermore, he was appointed rather than elected -- but appointed reluctantly by Arafat, who was under considerable diplomatic duress to do so.

It did not help Abbas' standing a bit that Washington froze the assets of several charitable offices of Hamas two weeks ago. Those offices doled out money to poor Palestinians who needed it for food, school and clothes. Israel and the US government maintain that the same pot of money financed terrorist attacks.

Now more than ever, Palestinians appear convinced that violence will continue. The past two weeks have brought nothing but disillusionment and rage as Israel has intensified its military campaign against members of the militant group Hamas and the Islamic militant wing.

So far, 12 Hamas members and six civilians have been killed by missile strikes as those Hamas members drove or walked down the streets of Gaza.

Israeli attacks intensified after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 22 people.

Rather than turn away from Arafat, who has been accused by the US government and Israel of worsening the conflict, Palestinians moved to embrace him even more tightly.

As the conflict again intensifies, many here said the enmity between the sides -- Israel and the Palestinians -- has grown too potent to talk of peace anymore. As they sifted through a pile of pajamas, two sisters, Raeda and Rida Yousef, chronicled the long list of things lost since the truce with Israel shattered around them two weeks ago, cracking with it all sense of hope.

Homes have been crushed into rubble and their belongings buried deep inside. Two children have died, casualties of Israeli missile fire aimed at Islamic militants in their cars. The fragments of freedom they recouped during the truce evaporated over night.