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Last update - 01:12 23/01/2009
Hamas calls for Fatah reconciliation, vows to continue fighting Israel
By News Agencies
Tags: israel news, gaza 

Hamas called Thursday for reconciliation with supporters of rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas but insisted on pursuing resistance against Israel.

The condition appeared to preclude any agreement with Abbas, who seeks a peace deal with Israel and whose moderate Fatah faction was not among the groups that backed the statement by eight Damascus-based radical Palestinian factions including Hamas.

Earlier on Thursday, a senior Hamas official dismissed any reconciliation talks with rival Fatah group.
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Sami Khater, a member of the militant group's Damascus-based branch, said Arab and international donations to reconstruct the war-devastated Gaza should go directly to Hamas and not to rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas whose faction rules the West Bank.

Khater said Abbas and his Palestinian Authority cannot be trusted.

His remarks followed claims by the militants that they emerged victorious after the group survived a relentless three-week offensive by Israel in the Gaza Strip.

Khater said a Hamas delegation will travel to Cairo this weekend for talks with Egyptian mediators on ways to consolidate a Gaza cease-fire in place since last Sunday.

Palestinian Authority Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Habbash earlier on Thursday accused gunmen from the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip of hijacking dozens of trucks carrying aid intended for residents reeling from the three-week-long Israeli assault.

Habbash, of the Fatah-led government based in the West Bank, told Voice of Palestine Radio that the trucks were supposed to come under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Hamas, however, says the supply trucks were dispatched by Arab donors specifically for the Hamas administration in the Strip, and to no other group, to distribute to the people of Gaza.

As a result, on arrival in the Strip the trucks were directed to Hamas warehouses, officials from the Islamist movement said, adding that they have papers from the donor countries showing that the supplies were sent to the Hamas administration.

UN officials have also said that none of its supply and aid trucks have been hijacked or attacked by any armed group inside Gaza.

Habbash further accused Hamas gunmen of executing members of its rival, President Mahmoud Abbas' secular Fatah group, during and after the Israeli assault, which began on December 27.

Aid officials in Jerusalem said earlier this week that least 10 trucks with humanitarian aid sent to the Gaza Strip by the Jordanian Red Crescent Society were confiscated by Hamas police shortly after the trucks entered the territory on Thursday evening.

Eight trucks had food products and another two had medicines. They were reportedly taken to Hamas-run ministries.

A spokesman for the Hamas Ministry of Interior in the Strip said Thursday that "any collaborator will be arrested" but added that the movement "will do nothing outside the law."

"Anyone who is proved to have helped the occupation (Israel) will be arrested," Ihab Ghassein said.

He said Hamas was not working against Fatah but against collaborators, and accused the secular movement of lying to "cover up its own lack of help" to Gaza residents during and after the Israeli offensive, which left over 1,400 Palestinians dead and thousands of people homeless.

On Monday Fatah warned Hamas against "targeting" its members and accused the Islamist organization of killing at least 16 Fatah members, shooting over 80 in the leg and placing many others under house arrest.

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