Many Fatah officials said on Monday that they would strongly oppose any attempt to drop the armed struggle option from the faction's political program that was endorsed in 1989.
According to a draft of the proposed political program that was leaked to the Palestinian media on Monday, the Fatah leadership plans to replace the term "armed struggle" with "resistance."
The new program would state that while Fatah supports the peace process with Israel, it maintains the right to continue the "resistance" to achieve the goals of the Palestinians. "Negotiations with Israel were not part of Fatah's culture," said Jamal Nazzal, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank. He declared that Fatah had never recognized Israel's right to exist and denied that his faction had asked Hamas or any other Palestinian party to do so...
The calm in the western Negev continues. Hamas refrains from firing rockets into Israel and its senior figures emphasize for Western ears its policy of restraint. Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha told a New York Times correspondent that “the fighters needed a break and the people needed a break.” According to the New York Times report, the decision to suspend rocket fire was “partly the result of popular pressure,” and occurred because people were questioning the value of the rockets, which they regarded as relatively ineffective. 
