When Israeli defenders returned fire this week, Abu Mazen called all Arab casualties "martyrs who were killed today by the shells of the Zionist enemy." He hopes to win extremists' votes by adopting their hate-filled rhetoric as well as Arafat's platform of a "right of return" of Arabs to overwhelm Israel.

Sharon hopes this is campaign oratory to increase the expected majority for Abu Mazen. But the Palestinian, by appeasing his fiercest faction of die-hards, is playing with fire. To reach a settlement, he will have to make compromises that these warring radicals totally reject - which, if they refuse and rebel, would mean Palestinian civil war...

...Sharon is hopeful. "In the past, I have shaken hands with Abu Mazen, and with him I can talk," he told me the other night. "I would never shake Arafat's hand."

He is also confident that he can carry out his disengagement during or after an election, if one is needed - provided his counterpart on the Palestinian side makes certain that the thousands of Israelis making this painful exodus are allowed to leave in peace. I take that to mean he expects Abu Mazen to restrain his armed extremists by any means necessary...

Members of the Fatah (news - web sites) youth movement chant slogans during a rally for Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas at a hotel in the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Hanina, January 5, 2005. Palestinian fighters wounded 12 soldiers in a rocket attack on Israel Wednesday, defying calls for a cease-fire from Mahmoud Abbas, the frontrunner to succeed Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) in an election Sunday. REUTERS/Ammar Awad