Genius or folly? Under pressure to restore a chance of talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (pa), Mah-moud Abbas, the Palestinian president, last week stunned the Hamas-led government with an ultimatum. If it did not accept within ten days a proposal, signed last month by a group of Palestinians in Israeli jails, that implicitly recognises Israel's existence, he would hold a referendum on it. Most Palestinians, polls suggest, would support the idea. Hamas would then be jammed between its refusal so far to recognise Israel, which has led to an international embargo of the pa, and the will of the people who elected it in January.
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