Last update - 00:00 23/07/2007
West Bank Hamas leader says seizing Gaza Strip was wrong
By The Associated Press
A high-ranking Hamas official in the West Bank on Monday criticized the group's use of force to seize control of the Gaza Strip, saying part of Hamas was mulling ways to make peace with their Fatah rivals.
In comments that analysts said point to growing tension in Hamas, Ahmed Douleh said the Islamist group's leaders in the West Bank had at first sympathized with their Gaza peers in seeking to rid the territory of what they saw as corrupt forces within Fatah.
"But then it snowballed. Certainly the result of settling matters by force was wrong," he said a day after his release from a prison run by loyalists to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank's largest city of Nablus.
"As long as we are under occupation, we should not resort to force," he said
Douleh, 44, a senior West Bank Hamas and Interior Ministry official, is one of dozens arrested since Abbas sacked the Fatah-Hamas unity government after the Islamists routed his forces in Gaza and named a new government in June.
While Hamas now rules in Gaza, the Western-backed Abbas holds sway in the larger and more populous West Bank, where Hamas officials are being hunted and jailed by his Fatah forces and IDF troops.
Officials in Abbas' security forces say the Hamas officials being held were suspected of possible links with Hamas' Executive Force in the West Bank. In Gaza, Hamas has held dozens of Fatah officials, many of whom have been freed.
Douleh said Hamas officials in the West Bank were debating ways to mend fences with Fatah through dialogue.
"Certainly the consequences of what happened in Gaza are not simple for the movement, and the situation is worrying," Douleh said, pointing to rising poverty in the coastal territory, whose crossings are often shut by Israel citing security concerns.
Fatah-allied lawmaker in Gaza shot by unidentified gunmen
Unidentified gunmen Monday shot and wounded a Palestinian lawmaker allied to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement and beat up another man in the legislator's office, witnesses and hospital officials said.
The legislator, Ashraf Jomma, was treated for minor wounds and released from hospital, officials said.
Fatah loyalists took to the streets after the attack and set tires afire in protest. The militant Hamas movement, which controls Gaza, mobilized its security forces, but there were no immediate clashes.
Fatah said the raid was carried out by members of Hamas's Executive Force, although Hamas denied the allegation.
Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas Executive Force, said the security unit was investigating a serious incident, and will bring those responsible to justice.
Jomma was one of four Fatah legislators who remained in Gaza after the Islamist Hamas forcibly took over the coastal territory in a brief but bloody internecine war last month. Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led government and installed a moderate caretaker administration in the West Bank.
The assault could be related to a communication sent to journalists earlier Monday complaining that Jomma had notified the West Bank government of the identity of several men described as Hamas employees, meaning they would be denied their salaries.
The government has begun paying salaries to civil servants, but has refused to pay anyone hired by Hamas, or about 30,000 of the 164,000 government workers in Gaza.