Fatah-Hamas Rift Widens; Hamas Call for Uprising against PA Security Forces

The internecine battle between the rival Fatah and Hamas Palestinian factions has grown worse and threatens to boil-over with violence. Fatah leader Azzam Al-Ahmad stirred things up when he said that because Hamas is responsible for preventing a unity government it must hand over the Gaza Strip to Fatah rule. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri responded with an angry denial, pinning the failure to form a working unity government on “Fatah’s factionalism.” The Ma’an news agency reported that the spat grew more lethal on Wednesday when deputies of the Hamas movement called for “an uprising and a revolt against the political arrests” carried out by the Palestinian Authority [read: Fatah] in the West Bank and for Palestinian factions to adopt “a firm stand against the Authority’s crimes against the resistance and its members.” The Hamas officials repeated their charge that the security cooperation with Israel set forth in the 1993 Oslo Accords amounts to “high treason.”