Hamas, Abbas Supporters Clash

Street clashes erupted Saturday in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a dispute between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamist group Hamas, which now controls the Palestinian government.

Stone-throwing confrontations in Gaza City and the northern West Bank town of Nablus broke out between hundreds of supporters of Hamas and Fatah, the former ruling faction that was defeated in January’s parliamentary elections.

Palestinian police and witnesses said the separate melees escalated to include firebombs and exchanges of gunfire. Scores of people were hurt, but no one was killed.

The violence began after exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal late Friday accused Abbas of seeking to unfairly limit the militant group’s powers of governance, which he described as an act of treachery.

Abbas, who is considered a relative moderate, had earlier in the day issued a decree that annulled Hamas’ creation of a new force made up mainly of Palestinian militants and the appointment of a well-known Palestinian militant leader as its chief.

Meshaal, in a message from his base in Damascus, Syria, suggested that Abbas was party to a “military-Zionist” effort to topple the Hamas government.

The clashes were the worst open fighting in months between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas formally took control of the Palestinian Authority last month after its upset election victory in January. Until then, the sole governing authority had been Fatah.

Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siyam on Thursday appointed Jamal abu Samhadana, a wanted militant who is accused of masterminding several attacks on Israel, to lead the new security force. Siyam insisted Saturday that the appointment would stand and creation of the new force would go forward, despite Abbas’ decree.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, Khaled abu Hilal, offered reassurances Saturday that the new force would come under the auspices of the existing Palestinian security apparatus, largely controlled by Abbas, but that was seen as unlikely to defuse the dispute.

Abbas is away on a fundraising tour of the Arab world and several European countries, but a senior aide, Rafik Husseini, traveled to Gaza on Saturday to try to patch things up with Hamas.

Both Fatah and Hamas have hundreds, if not thousands, of men under arms. An open clash between the two probably would trigger chaos in the West Bank and Gaza.

In Nablus, as many as 1,000 Fatah followers gathered in the center of town, chanting slogans of support for Abbas. More than a dozen Fatah-linked gunmen, firing their weapons in the air, briefly took over a courthouse in protest.

Hamas, which does not recognize Israel’s right to exist, has found itself largely isolated from the international community since taking power. During the last five years, the Islamist group was responsible for dozens of suicide bombings inside Israel, but it has largely adhered to an informal cease-fire since the beginning of 2005.

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Times special correspondent Fayed abu Shammaleh in Gaza City contributed to this report.