The militant group Hamas, under relentless Israeli air strikes that have driven leaders underground, is considering a fresh truce to ensure its political survival, according to Palestinian officials.
They say the Islamist movement is facing its worst crisis, with threats of instant assassination from the sky, loss of funding at home and abroad and a showdown with a reformist Palestinian Authority committed to a US-backed peace plan.
Israel's military has declared war on Hamas, saying no leader would be immune anywhere to elimination by helicopter gunships after a Hamas suicide bomber killed 21 Israelis in Jerusalem, shattering a truce declared by the militants.
A senior Palestinian official said today that Egypt, which brokered the truce in June, had begun contacts with some exiled Hamas leaders abroad "to push them toward hatching a new ceasefire and warn them of the grave danger if the current escalation continues".
Hamas vowed to retaliate for Israel's killing of political leader Abu Shanab on August 21st and of 10 more militants in air strikes in the Gaza Strip since then. So far, its riposte amounts to sporadic rocket firings that caused little damage. There has been pressure to avenge the killings from tens of thousands of Hamas faithful marching in funeral parades.
An informed source on Hamas said the group may be willing to forge a new ceasefire if Israel exercised similar restraint.
A senior Israeli military source said Israel would consider halting air strikes only if Hamas declared it was "giving up totally the tool of violence...and its infrastructure".
Polls indicate that while most Palestinians still back the militant fight against Israeli occupation in principle, they also want calm to put pressure on Israel to withdraw troops and allow the peace plan envisaging a Palestinian state to advance.
Political analysts say a relapse into bloodshed could topple moderate Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and that a new spate of suicide attacks could loosen US restraints on Israel that have prevented it from expelling Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
Israel has threatened to re-invade Palestinian-administered Gaza, designated along with the West Bank for a Palestinian state by 2005 under the "road map" peace initiative, if Islamic militants carry out another major suicide bombing.