GAZA, June 20: Israel attacked Islamist fighters in Gaza on Wednesday for the first time since Hamas seized the territory, and ended an embargo of the Palestinian Authority by opening contacts with a new government in the West Bank.

Israeli soldiers killed four Palestinian fighters in a pre-dawn incursion into the Gaza Strip to hunt for wanted militants. Israel also carried out air strikes against rocket launch sites after one rocket fired from Gaza struck Israel.

Hamas Islamist militias overran President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction and seized control of the territory a week ago.

Abbas, who responded by severing ties with Hamas, denounced his Islamist rivals in his first public remarks on the crisis.

“I address our people in Gaza. I tell them that the plans of these putschist assassins have no future,” he told lawmakers in a speech defending his decision to form an emergency government shutting out Hamas which was quickly endorsed by the West.Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made Israel’s first high-level diplomatic contact with the emergency cabinet formed by Abbas in the West Bank after last week’s fighting.

Livni told Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in a telephone conversation that the establishment of his emergency cabinet, replacing one headed by Hamas, would allow “progress on various issues ... as well as advance the political process”.Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the exchange “represents the beginning of a dialogue between the two governments, a dialogue that was put unfortunately on hold for the period under which Hamas controlled the Palestinian government”. “We look forward to continuing to engage with the new Palestinian government,” Regev said.

Israel had had no contact with the previous Palestinian government for 15 months while Hamas was in power on the back of a parliamentary election win 18 months ago. But it has maintained contacts with Abbas, who was elected separately.

The result has been a schism that leaves Gaza, a 40 km strip of Mediterranean coast, isolated behind a dense Israeli military cordon and tightening economic blockade.—Reuters