RAMALLAH, June 16: Fatah fighters went on the rampage against Hamas in the West Bank on Saturday, stoking fears that deadly factional violence could spread as the Islamists tightened their grip on power in the volatile Gaza Strip.
Gunmen linked to President Mahmud Abbas’s secular Fatah faction stormed parliament in the West Bank and also ransacked dozens of offices linked to Hamas, including charities, a school and television and radio stations.
The violence erupted a day after Hamas’s bloody capture of the Gaza Strip, where masked Hamas fighters were roaming the streets of what is now an Islamist enclave sandwiched between Israel and Egypt.
Israeli troops at the Erez crossing with Gaza fired warning shots as dozens of Palestinians tried to flee, while the home of iconic leader Yasser Arafat became the latest target of looting in the impoverished territory.
Appeals for restraint from the Palestinian Authority to its supporters in the West Bank appeared to have limited effect. “We have to make sure that these crimes (of Hamas in Gaza) not be transferred to the West Bank under any circumstances,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP.
“If someone is killed in Gaza, someone else should not be killed in the West Bank... We don’t act like them; we represent law and order.”
Abbas, bolstered by Western and Arab backing, has named a moderate, Salam Fayyad, to head an emergency cabinet in the hope of an end to a crippling Western aid boycott. He did this after sacking the Hamas-led national unity government and declaring a state of emergency, moves supported as “legitimate” on Saturday by the so-called Quartet — the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.
The Quartet said it “recognised the necessity and legitimacy of these decisions, taken under Palestinian law,” according to a statement released by the US State Department.
A Palestinian official told AFP Washington had told Abbas it would resume economic aid to his new cabinet, although there was no immediate confirmation.
Abbas’s new cabinet was set to be unveiled by noon on Sunday, further sealing the divide of the Palestinians and making their aspirations of an independent state an ever more distant dream.
Hamas’s takeover of Gaza, branded a military coup by Abbas, has effectively split the Palestinians into two separately ruled entities in Gaza and the West Bank.
The United States along with the European Union suspended all direct aid to the government after Hamas — considered a terror group by Israel and the West — formed a cabinet last year.
Hamas gunmen were going house to house in search of Fatah rivals to seize their weapons. At least 200 Fatah men have already fled the territory to neighbouring Egypt.
With Gaza sealed off from the outside world by Israel, there are fears of a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished strip of land.
Looters have seized everything from computers to flowerpots and kitchen sinks from the fallen Fatah strongholds, including Abbas’s bullet-scarred seafront presidential compound and Arafat’s home.
“I saw armed people entering inside, stealing Arafat’s things and burning one of the bedrooms,” said one witness.—AFP
