Just two days after branding Israel the "Zionist enemy", Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged yesterday to pursue peace talks following the January 9 presidential election he is widely expected to win.
"After the elections and the appointment of the cabinet, we will negotiate with the Israelis," Mr Abbas told reporters during a campaign swing through the West Bank city of Nablus.
Asked if he would talk with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is viewed with deep mistrust by many Palestinians, Mr Abbas replied: "I cannot say he is not a partner. He is elected and we will negotiate with him."
As Palestinian prime minister, Mr Abbas met Mr Sharon at the Israeli leader's Jerusalem office in May 2003 and a month later at a Middle East conference in Jordan that affirmed an internationally backed peace "road map".
Mr Abbas, who has called for an end to violence in a four-year-old Palestinian uprising, has spoken often since Yasser Arafat's death on November 11 about hopes for a resumption of peace negotiations with Israel.
But he described Israel as the "Zionist enemy" after seven Palestinian youths were killed in Gaza on Tuesday by an Israeli tank shell, which the army said was aimed at militants who had launched mortar bombs at a Jewish settlement.
Mr Sharon's deputy condemned the use of the term as intolerable, and Mr Abbas appeared to make a fence-mending gesture in an interview published yesterday in Israel's Maariv daily.
"We are interested in negotiations, out of a belief they will succeed. We are ready, and if Israel is interested, let's do it," he was quoted as saying.
Israel has promised to help ensure the Palestinian elections go smoothly by pulling its troops out of West Bank cities.
But soldiers raided a restaurant near the West Bank city of Hebron and briefly detained 20 people, including a group of Abbas campaigners. The army said it acted on a security alert.
Later Mr Abbas cancelled plans for a Friday campaign tour in central Jerusalem to avoid being surrounded by Israeli security in the city, Palestinian officials said.
On his campaign tour of Nablus, more than 10,000 Palestinians joined rallies for Mr Abbas at al-Najah University and nearby Balata refugee camp, where he embraced fighters from a military group in his Fatah movement.
Thousands whistled and cheered as Mr Abbas repeated core Palestinian demands for the removal of all of the settlements Israel has built in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, areas it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Later Mr Abbas was expected to celebrate Orthodox Christmas at the site of Jesus' birth in the West Bank town of Bethlehem.
Mr Abbas has urged Palestinian fighters to cease mortar bomb and rocket attacks, saying they only draw heavy Israeli retaliation.
Militant groups have rejected the call and Mr Abbas's Fatah faction accused the Hamas movement on Wednesday of sedition which threatened the first Palestinian presidential election since 1996.
Responding to Fatah's broadside, Hamas said its attacks on Gaza settlements and Israeli border towns were "acts of self-defence in response to continued Israeli aggression".
Hamas seeks the destruction of the Jewish state and has not fielded a candidate in a presidential ballot it sees as part of interim peace deals with Israel which the group has rejected.