The Egyptian consul in the Gaza Strip hosted a meeting between Hamas and Fatah officials Wednesday night, in an effort to end the violent stand-off between the two groups that has led to a spate of deaths on both sides, Israel Radio reported Thursday.
According to the report, both sides said that the five-hour meeting had been a ‘positive’ one. Egyptian defense officials were also present at the five-hour talks held in the consul's home in Gaza.
The meeting came hours after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas ordered thousands of police deployed throughout Gaza to restore order after fighting between the rival militias, a senior security official said.
The order, expected to be fully implemented by Thursday, followed a decision by the Hamas-led government to defy an Abbas veto on the issue and deploy its own security force in the Strip.
‘President Abbas has ordered all security forces, all branches to deploy men in the streets to restore order,’ the official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.
He said it would be the largest such deployment in Gaza since police fanned out in force ahead of last year's Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Earlier Wednesday, the Hamas government began deploying dozens of members of a new security unit made up of militants across the Gaza Strip, despite a veto by Abbas.
The move was expected to further heighten tensions between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah Party.
In direct defiance of Abbas' veto, Interior Minister Said Siyam of Hamas announced earlier Wednesday that the unit would begin operations. ‘In line with my authority, I announce the beginning of the work of the executive unit that was formed recently to protect the security of the citizens and their property,’ Siyam told a news conference.
Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, a Fatah spokesman, called on Siyam to ‘retract a hasty decision that may lead our people to catastrophe.’
The new Hamas unit, called the ‘Security Forces Support System,’ is an attempt to grant an aura of formal authority to ongoing operations that have until now been carried out by Hamas's military wing and other armed groups including the Popular Resistance Committees.
There has been growing internal violence in Gaza fuelled by a power struggle between Abbas of Fatah and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.
The Hamas-led government and Abbas have been wrangling over power since the Islamic militant group took power in late March. A key area of dispute is control over the security forces.
As PA chairman, Abbas wields considerable power and carries the title of commander of the security forces.
Three of the six security branches report to the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, but Abbas has placed one of his loyalists in a commanding position of the most important of the three branches. In response, Hamas last month announced the creation of the special unit to be made up of former militants.
Abbas has vetoed the formation of the unit, seen largely as Hamas's private army.
The unit is headed by Jamal Abu Samhadaneh, a militant high on Israel's wanted list.
Siyam said Wednesday the other PA security services are not effectively fulfilling their duties and thus need the new Hamas unit ‘to support’ them.
In practice, however, the new unit is a military organization formed to assist Hamas in its day-to-day clashes with Fatah militants and other PA security services. The unit has been operating for several weeks in Gaza and has been involved in gun battles with Fatah men and members of the PA's Preventive Security Service. In one of these clashes, in the Gaza village of Abassan, three people were killed.
Gunmen target Hamas men in Gaza
Gunmen shot dead a Hamas militant in a drive-by shooting Wednesday in a Gaza refugee camp, medics and Hamas sources said, in the second such killing since Tuesday.
Medics said that gunmen shot the Hamas man as they passed him in a car in Jabalya refugee camp, and that he died later in hospital.
Hamas sources confirmed the death.
On Tuesday night, unidentified Palestinian gunmen shot dead a senior Hamas activist in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian medics and a security source said.
They said unknown gunmen shot and killed 25-year old Mohammed Tatar, a senior member of Hamas's military wing, as he was driving near Haniyeh's office in Gaza city.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a separate incident Tuesday night, masked gunmen in the Khan Yunis area of Gaza shot and critically wounded another senior member of Hamas's military wing and wounded a second Hamas member, witnesses said.
Vowing to punish the killers of the two Hamas gunmen, Hamas's Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades said Wednesday: ‘The identities of the traitors are known to us and we will chase them down ... and sever the hand that harms us.’
‘People who are behind these incidents must be caught by security and executed in the public square,’ Marwan Abu Ras, a Hamas official, said Tuesday.
A spokesman for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a militant group linked with Fatah, who goes by the nickname Abu Mohammed, denied that his group had any connection with the attacks and he condemned them.
Last week, three gunmen were killed and a dozen people were wounded in violence between Fatah and Hamas. The two groups agreed to set up a joint committee to defuse tensions.