Gaza crisis defers dispute over Abbas presidency

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent - Analysis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose original four-year term expires on Friday, faces a legitimacy challenge that Israel's Gaza war has only postponed.

How it plays out will affect Abbas's ability to pursue peace talks with Israel. These have so far proved fruitless, earning him only derision from Hamas, which preaches armed resistance.

The Israeli onslaught on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has temporarily eclipsed the dispute between Abbas's secular Fatah faction and its Islamist rivals over whether he must quit now.

"Currently we have a bigger problem than January 9," Gaza-based Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said. "Our priority is to fight this war imposed on us and to defend our people."

For his part, Abbas, who contends that legal changes mean his term ends in 2010, has deferred plans to set a date for parliamentary and presidential elections, which he hoped would pre-empt any Hamas effort to depose or replace him.

A senior Palestinian official in Ramallah said Abbas was now preoccupied with ending the Gaza war. Once a cease-fire was in place, he would ask Hamas to renew reconciliation talks.

"We demand democracy, we defend democracy and therefore whenever there is Palestinian reconciliation there will be legislative and presidential elections, together, at the same time," Abbas told a news conference in Madrid on Thursday.

But with Palestinian emotions raw, the conflict over the presidency has not gone away -- and may get more personal.