Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, stepping up a power struggle with the Hamas-led government, announced today a July 26th referendum on a statehood proposal implicitly recognising Israel.
Hours before he issued his decree, Hamas formally ended a 16-month truce by firing more than 25 rockets and mortar bombs at Israel in response to the killing of seven people on a Gaza beach during Israeli shelling yesterday.
Hopes for peacemaking appeared even more remote, with Mr Abbas and the Islamist group that defeated his Fatah faction in a January election locked in political confrontation and Hamas and Israel on a fast track to battle.
"As chairman of the PLO Executive Committee and president of the Palestinian Authority, I have decided to exercise my constitutional right and duty to hold a referendum over the document of national agreement," Mr Abbas declared in a decree read by an aide.
Swiftly rejecting the announcement as a "declaration of a coup against the government", Mushir al-Masri, a leading Hamas legislator, urged Palestinians to boycott the vote.
Hamas officials accuse Abbas of using the referendum, penned by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, to try to engineer the downfall of their government, which has struggled with a Western aid embargo and growing disorder.
The manifesto calls for a Palestinian state, alongside Israel, on all of the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
Opinion polls show most Palestinians back the proposal. Israel calls it a non-starter. Palestinians will be asked to vote "yes" or "no" on the question: "Do you agree with the document of national agreement - the prisoner's document?" the aide said.
In the Gaza Strip today thousands of Palestinian mourners wept with 7-year-old Huda Ghalya as she kneeled to kiss her dead father before he, her mother and three siblings were buried.
The five, including a 4-month-old, a 3-year-old and a 10-year-old, were among the seven killed during a seaside outing yesterday after Israeli gunboats shelled the area to curb cross-border rocket fire.
Twenty people were wounded. "Please do not leave me alone," said Huda, who had been swimming in the Mediterranean when the blast tore up the beach.
In a televised speech in which he announced the referendum, Mr Abbas said Israel, ignoring his hand "extended in peace", had committed "a horrible, dangerous and ugly massacre".
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, expressing a willingness to meet Abbas, has said the Palestinians must dismantle militant groups, as stipulated by a US-backed peace "road map", if peacemaking is to resume.
Israel has failed to carry out its commitments under the plan. A spokesman for Hamas's Izz el-Deen al-Qassam brigades said they had resumed attacks against Israel in response to the shelling.
The Israeli army said 16 Qassam rockets and 10 mortar bombs were fired at Israel, causing no casualties or damage. Israel Radio said Defence Minister Amir Peretz had sent a message to Abbas voicing "deep regret at the deaths of innocent people".
Israel's army said one of its shells may have hit the beach by accident, but it was still investigating.
Army chief Lieutenent-General Dan Halutz planned to make a statement on the incident later in the day.
Hamas has abstained from striking in Israel since a truce was announced in early 2005. Israeli officials said the group has been helping other militant factions to carry out daily rocket launchings from Gaza, territory Israel quit last year