Fatah and Hamas clash despite talks

Fatah, which is headed by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and officials from the ruling Hamas faction offered different accounts of the incident which occurred despite predictions by Hamas members that a joint government deal with Fatah was near.

 

Kibha told Reuters that Fatah gunmen had stopped his car at a makeshift checkpoint outside Tubas.

 

He said: “Without warning they shot at my car.”

 

His convoy turned around and headed in the opposite direction, towards the West Bank town of Jenin.

 

Security forces

 

A Fatah official said their gunmen had opened fire only after armed members of a Hamas-led police force accompanying the minister’s car had shot towards them.

 

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A Palestinian photographer was injured by a bullet fragment in the head, the official said.

 

Hamas denies it has any police in the West Bank. Fatah has accused Hamas of seeking to build such a force there.

 

Disagreement over the Hamas police force in Gaza is a major obstacle to the sides wrapping up talks over a unity government.

 

After Saudi mediation, Hamas and Fatah agreed a month ago to forge a joint coalition cabinet, largely ending weeks of bloody factional fighting centred in the Gaza Strip in which more than 90 people were killed.

 

‘Unity’ push

 

Abbas said on Thursday a unity deal was “99 per cent” agreed although he had not yet agreed with Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas-aligned prime minister designate, who would be interior minister – a post that controls the powerful security services.

 

Saeed Seyam, the current interior minister from Hamas, said the movement has demanded its police force remain intact under any unity deal, pending a reorganisation of the other security forces now dominated by Abbas’s Fatah.

 

Seyam, in Gaza, said: “The executive force will remain until the other security services are restructured.”