Israelis have turned out in their thousands to protest prime minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to hand over control of tracts of the Gaza Strip to an Abba tribute act. Sharon is set to open negotiations with “Mahmoud Abba”, also known as “Abba-Mazing”, believing that Swedish pop with a Palestinian twist can bring an end to decades of religion-fuelled bloodshed.

Yesterday in Gaza there was sporadic guerrilla disco-dancing, and what was thought to be machine-gun fire rang out although correspondents later confirmed the sound was actually Palestinian activists chanting the Abba lyric “takeachance, takeachance, takeachance”.

“What I’m saying to Abba-Mazing is ring, ring, why don’t you give me a call and lay all your love on me. Maybe we can talk about pulling out our super troopers? I dooo, I do I do I do I do I do think we can reach a solution that doesn’t have to be winner-takes-it-all. I wish I could find a way to work Fernando into this quote but chiquitita you and I know that’s not going to happen,” said Sharon.

In other developments, as the cliche goes, veteran reporters on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lamented the fact that current peace talks were making it harder to file routine, formulaic news stories on the latest bombings and retaliations.

“You used to just wait for the bus to blow up, Hamas would fax you a press release, a few hours later the Israelis would bomb the crap out of someone’s house, the fax would come through from the military PR blokes and the story would just about write itself with the help of a few keyboard macros,” said one correspondent.

“It’s a pretty good lurk, pretty cruisey and much better than having to write this nuanced stuff about the peace negotiations.”

Israeli helicopters, meanwhile, launched several attacks on the Jenin refugee camp. The Israeli military said the raids were in response to the latest shipment of missiles they had received from America. “We just wanted to try them out and we have confirmed they are shit-hot,” said spokesman Sol Rosensteinbrenner.