ABBAS FAILING

Backing seen weakening for Abbas.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is being hailed internationally for his peacemaking efforts with Israel, is failing on virtually every important domestic front and is rapidly losing support in the territory he governs, Palestinian and Israeli officials, activists, and analysts say.

Violence has surged in the West Bank. Firing by Al Aqsa Brigades gunmen at Abbas’ own headquarters last week was just the most widely publicized of numerous recent incidents in which militants disrupted public order and scorned efforts by members of Abbas’ administration to rein them in. The same day, other gunmen torched a Palestinian Authority checkpoint in Tulkarem. Abbas’ interior minister was fired on recently by Al Aqsa gunmen in Jenin.

Numerous attempts to disarm the gunmen have failed. Abbas’s programs for injecting new blood into stagnant ministries and getting rid of ineffective and corrupt officials are stalled. And Abbas — generally known by the nickname Abu Mazen — is incurring deepening enmity both from the Palestinian establishment, which is resisting him at every turn, and from the young guard of the ruling Fatah movement, whose members believe he is not fulfilling his principal commitments.