JERUSALEM, Jan 11 (AFP) - Ariel Sharon and Mahmud Abbas have expressed a desire to initiate a dialogue that was unthinkable before Yasser Arafat's death two months ago, but both men face tough challenges at home.
The Israeli prime minister even called the newly elected Palestinian leader to wish him success, in what was already the first known contact at this level in four years.
Upon being declared the landslide victor of Sunday's election to replace the 'rais', Abbas extended "a hand of peace" to Israel, while Sharon clinched approval for a cabinet in favour of quitting the Gaza Strip and vowed to meet the Palestinian leader.
But Abbas will need all the support he can get and Sharon all his political wits to outmanoeuvre opponents within their respective parties before joining hands to take the moribund peace process forward.
Abbas has irked radicals with his repeated calls to end the armed intifada.
Despite excellent credentials in talking to the likes of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the moderate Abbas will have his work cut out to rally hardline factions to a truce.
Independent Palestinian MP Hanan Ashrawi said Abbas's electoral landslide could grant him legitimacy to achieve just that, provided Israel refrains from actions that could scupper his efforts.
Abbas "had succeeded in maintaining a truce for 52 days" when he was prime minister in 2003, but charged it had been shattered after "neither Israel nor the United States gave him any help."
Ashrawi predicted that despite apparent reluctance to follow Abbas, militant groups could agree to a fresh halt in anti-Israeli attacks "if the violence of Israeli occupation also stops and the prospect of a fair settlement begins to take shape."
"Hamas is trying to downplay the significance of his electoral score but it is acknowledging the new mood in the Palestinian street," she said.
The deputy also warned that Israel should avoid pushing Abbas into a corner by making requests that could weaken his domestic standing.
"Israel wants a Palestinian president tailored to its own needs but the Palestinian president will never be a Zionist," she conlcuded.
For his part, Sharon was battling his own demons with unrelenting opposition, including from his own Likud party, to his plan to relinquish the Gaza Strip by pulling troops out and dismantling 21 Jewish settlements there.
The new cabinet coalition painstakingly cobbled together by Sharon with Labour and the United Torah Judaism party only received parliamentary approval by a narrow margin Monday.
Sharon had lost his governing majority last summer when pro-settler parties quit his government to protest against the Gaza evacuation plan, and 13 rebel MPs in his own party nearly sank his efforts to revive it.
"Sharon has the resoluteness, but he wants for votes. Abu Mazen has the votes, but many people doubt how resolute he is," said Nahum Barnea, chief editorialist in Israel's top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily.
"The two of them are planning to make revolutionary changes in the Middle Eastern reality. All provided that Madame Naomi Blumenthal and Monsieur Mickey Ratzon, not to mention Yehiel Hazan, condescend to give them permission," he added, in reference to three leading rebel Likud MPs.
01/11/2005 15:38 GMT - AFP