JERUSALEM — Israelis don’t know whether to feel worry, indifference or satisfaction at Palestinian infighting.Never much united on whether to view the Palestinians as neighbours or foes, Israelis are watching the latest crisis in the West Bank and Gaza with more than the usual mix of emotions.

Few in the Jewish state can be expected to rue the pressure being piled on the governing Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas by its more moderate Fatah rivals. But then again, there is no guarantee that Fatah, despite its Western backing, will prevail.

That leaves little comfort beyond the relative respite in the six-year-old Palestinian uprising against Israel.

“There is tendency among Israelis to be relieved at the Palestinians killing each other rather than them,” said Jacky Hugi, Middle East commentator for Israel’s Maariv newspaper. “But this does not bring us closer to peace, and it ignores the likelihood that Palestinians will resume attacks on Israel as a means of healing their own differences,” he said.

Palestinian critics say Israeli military and economic clampdowns stoke tension, leading to internal violence.

For months, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert exhorted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, to curb Hamas.

Olmert and other top Israeli officials have fallen conspicuously silent since Abbas called for early Palestinian elections on Saturday, stirring Hamas suspicions that a coup is in the works. Inter-factional fighting was quick to erupt.

Israel is wary of Fatah being perceived as its stooge among Palestinians for whom Hamas’s fiery probity has major appeal.

“We have to be careful not give the impression that what has happened there (Palestinian territories) is, as it were, because of Israel,” Vice Premier Shimon Peres told Army Radio.

“At the end of the day, we would like the Palestinian people to live in peace, be united, and make peace (with Israel).” Yet some veteran observers of Israeli policy say that the government will have no choice but to become involved, through serious negotiations on forming a Palestinian state, if it wants to help Abbas and Palestinian moderates in the long-run. “Hamas was elected largely due to the Palestinians’ frustration with the sense that peace talks with Israel were not bringing them closer to what they consider viable statehood,” said Matti Steinberg, a retired Israeli intelligence analyst. “If we engage Abbas as a partner and help him achieve that vision, then he will be vindicated in the eyes of most Palestinians. Any lesser concessions from Israel will smack of bribery, of patronage, and bring him down,” Steinberg said.

Palestinians seek statehood in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Israel quit Gaza last year but has vowed to keep major Jewish settlements in the West Bank under any future peace accord.

Such unilateralism has been supported by many Israelis: Jewish nationalists believe in a biblical birthright to the land, while other Israelis share growing alarm at the rise of Hamas, which advocates the Jewish state’s destruction.

The fact that Hamas was elected in a free and fair vote last January has some Israelis muttering about the need for a Fatah strongman who will compel his people to accept co-existence.

That was how late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin spoke of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat when they signed interim peace deals in 1993. But the violent collapse of those efforts meant an anti-Arafat backlash in Israel and the United States, as well as formulas for the Palestinians to be “democratised”.

Such thinking could well be abandoned now, given the the US setbacks in Iraq. Speculation has been rife that Washington may redirect its efforts toward satisfying Palestinian demands and, by proxy, other Arabs and Muslims.

“There is no magic solution here, but power does often prove its worth among the Palestinians when it comes to achieving quiet, if not a sincere peace,” said a well-placed Israeli source familiar with government deliberations. “Instead of Arafat, we got Hamas. And if we’re not careful, instead of Hamas we could get al Qaeda,” the source said, referring to Israeli and Western intelligence assessments that Osama bin Laden’s network may take root amid the Gazan anarchy. Having championed the Gaza pullout, Olmert planned a similar go-it-alone redeployment in the West Bank. But following the July-August war in Lebanon, which undermined Israel’s sense of military autonomy, he has spoken increasingly of engaging Abbas. “The idea that we can be some sort of island of tranquility in a sea of chaos is simply false,” Steinberg said. (Reuters)