Rival Palestinians Agree to End Gaza Strip Clashes

Rival Palestinian factions in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip agreed Friday to end communal fighting after the bloodiest clashes since the beginning of the Palestinian uprising in 1987.

The agreement, between the Palestine Liberation Organization’s mainstream Fatah faction and the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas movement, was negotiated by Arab leaders from Israel and the occupied territories, including members of the Israeli Parliament.

It declares “an immediate end to all internal fighting and clashes between Fatah and Hamas and . . . a national union among Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and everywhere.”

The PLO and Hamas in Jordan called Thursday for an end to the clashes. Palestinian newspapers published similar appeals.

A boy was killed and more than 150 people were injured in a week of fighting between the two groups over their opposing views of current U.S.-brokered Middle East peace talks.

Clashes continued in the occupied Gaza Strip as the agreement was being negotiated.

An Israeli-Arab member of Parliament, Abdel Wahab Daroushe; the head of Arab local councils in Israel, Ibrahim Nimr Hussein, and a prominent Islamic mayor, Sheik Raed Salah, spent the day in Gaza meeting with local leaders to hammer out the agreement.

Saeb Erakat, a member of the Palestinian delegation to Middle East peace talks, and other West Bank leaders were also in Gaza for the talks.

“Hamas, Fatah and the other parties agreed to transmit the good news to our people to urge them to fulfill the document,” the agreement said.

Hamas and two leftist PLO factions have opposed the Middle East peace process, saying it would be a sellout of the Palestinian cause. Fatah has been the driving force behind Palestinian participation in the talks, which opened in Madrid last October.

Fatah supporters say Hamas has grown worried by prospects of peace after Labor leader Yitzhak Rabin defeated Yitzhak Shamir’s hard-line Likud Party in Israel’s elections last month.

Rabin says he would grant the 1.75 million Palestinians in the occupied territories limited self-rule within a year.

Word of the agreement between the rival Palestinian factions was announced from loudspeakers at mosques in the occupied Gaza Strip, Israeli radio said.