Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas extended a deadline on Tuesday to grant Hamas another 48 hours to accept a manifesto implicitly recognizing Israel or face a referendum on the issue. Abbas had set a Tuesday deadline for Hamas to embrace the manifesto on Palestinian statehood but delayed a showdown after what officials said were appeals by Arab leaders. A referendum would also be seen as a confidence vote on the Hamas government, whose election led the West and Israel to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority. Recent opinion polls suggest most Palestinians support the document.The manifesto calls for a Palestinian state on all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured from Jordan and Egypt in the 1967 war. "Abbas will within 48 hours issue the decree for holding the referendum," his spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said after the president met with the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee.
Yasser Abed Rabo, a PLO official close to Abbas, said the president would hold a news conference by the weekend to announce a date for the vote unless Hamas changed its mind. But despite the failure of talks late on Monday, both Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya left the door open for further dialogue. "We demand more meetings and more dialogue and we should not start by using ... time as a threat," Haniyya told his Cabinet at its weekly meeting.
Abed Rabbo quoted Abbas as saying he would agree to talks with Hamas on resolving the dispute over the manifesto up until the day the referendum was held.