Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will call a referendum on a statehood proposal that implicitly recognizes Israel after last-ditch talks with the Hamas government foundered on Monday, his office said. The referendum, expected in July, will be seen as a confidence vote in the new government and its policy of refusing to recognize Israel, which has led Western countries to impose crippling economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority. Abbas had given the Hamas Islamic militants until midnight to embrace a manifesto drawn up by prisoners in an Israeli jail. Hamas has rejected the document, which implicitly recognizes Israel by calling for a Palestinian state on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, and said a referendum would be illegal, setting the stage for a showdown with Abbas.Abbas would set the date for the referendum after meeting the executive committee of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Tuesday, his office said in a statement, carried by the Palestinian WAFA news agency. "In light of recent contacts, President Abbas will decide the date of the referendum after a meeting of the PLO executive committee," the statement said.
Khalida Jarar, a lawmaker from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, told reporters after factions held talks with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah late on Monday that he felt he had no option but to call the referendum. Jarar said Abbas also held a 70-minute phone conversation with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on the proposal, which she said also ended without agreement. Haniyeh is a senior Hamas leader.