GAZA: A leader from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas accused President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party on Tuesday of jeopardising a reconciliation deal, just a week after a unity government was formed to end their feuding.
Problems between the two sides surfaced just days after the new administration took office, when it failed to pay some 40,000 civil servants hired by Hamas in Gaza, saying the employees had to be vetted before receiving their salary.
Angry police loyal to Hamas in the Gaza Strip ordered the closure of all banks in the coastal enclave until the issue was resolved, dealing a fresh blow to an already sickly economy.
The tensions shifted to the nearby West Bank on Monday, when Hamas said that security forces loyal to Abbas had used violence to break up a rally organised by the movement and had assaulted senior Islamist leader Hassan Youssef.
"Since the reconciliation pact was signed, the gap between us and Fatah and the security services has got bigger," Youssef told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Tuesday.
"This is not a unity. They are doing this to push us to say we do not want reconciliation. We want reconciliation," the Hamas official said, accusing Abbas's policemen of confiscating the Islamists' green flags and detaining the group's supporters.
A security source in the West Bank said police intervened after protesters began chanting slogans against Abbas's Palestinian Authority, the body that exercises partial rule over the Palestinian territories.
Youssef denied that and called on the Palestinian Authority to say "whether Hamas was a banned group in the West Bank".
In a sign of the mutual animosity that exists between the two groups, Fatah accused Hamas activists of attacking their supporters in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, leaving four people needing hospital care.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official, condemned the closure of Gaza's banks and said the new administration was not to blame for the problem. It could take four months to complete the vetting process, he said.
"We affirm our confidence in the unity government and we reject attempts to doubt it or hold it responsible for the problem. The government is not responsible for the latest problem (delay of salaries)," he said.
Comments
Comments are closed.