Attack on Gaza settler gives Abbas first jolt

Israeli soldiers shot dead two wanted militants in its first raid since the vote for a successor to Yasser Arafat. At the urging of US-led mediators, Israel had suspended military action against militants to safeguard the election.

Wednesday’s killings threatened a relapse into what has been an intractable cycle of violence that, unless quickly checked, could stall fresh internationally backed momentum towards peace negotiations, frozen since 2000.

‘‘What happened in Gaza and the West Bank today underlines the urgency of reaching a mutual ceasefire to pave the way back to the negotiating table to follow the road map,’’ said Nabil Abu Rdainah, an Abbas aide, referring to a US-backed peace plan.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza withdrawal plan, which mediators see as a precursor to peace but settlers vow to resist, received a boost when their rightist political patrons failed to muster enough votes to stop parliament’s initial passage of the 2005 state budget on Wednesday. Sharon’s new ‘‘unity’’ coalition with the dovish Labour Party, formed to restore a majority for the Gaza pullout, would have been badly weakened if he had lost the budget vote.

Militants behind the ambush on the jeep boycotted the elections and have spurned Abbas’s appeals on a ceasefire. —Reuters