The Israeli army has seized documents suggesting the radical Islamic movement Hamas held talks in Cairo with Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement not to agree on curbing attacks on Israelis but to build its own links to Egypt, Israel media reports said Sunday.
According to reports by Israeli public television and the daily Haaretz, Hamas documents captured in a raid on Palestinian Authority (PA) security offices in Gaza last week show Hamas did not intend to reach a ceasefire agreement at talks that ended November 13 with a reported agreement to ”strengthen national
unity”.
Rather, the hardline group, which has claimed most of the suicide attacks against Israel, sought to use the Cairo talks to present itself as a viable alternative to the PA in the eyes of Egyptian officials.
”Hamas saw the talks as its opportunity to take a significant role in the Palestinian leadership”, the televison report quoted the document as saying.
Haaretz said in a report on its website that Hamas felt Egypt was looking at the possibility of co-operating with it as an alternative to the PA.
”Egypt is examining the possibility of working with Hamas as an alternative or at least as the main powerbroker in the Palestinian street,” it quotes the pamphlet as saying.
Haaretz described the document, dated November 12, as an internal memorandum distributed to Hamas activists and Palestinian preventive security services in Gaza. The Israeli army declined to comment on the reports.
Hamas has almost systematically ignored Arafat’s ceasefire calls, including a proposal in Cairo that was endorsed by the Fatah movement to freeze attacks inside Israel while carrying on with armed operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Earlier on Sunday, Israel accused the PA of planning to produce explosives in a secret Gaza factory for attacks against Israeli targets. The army based its claims on other classified Palestinian documents found during last week’s Gaza raid.
A leading Palestinian security official in Gaza denied the charges, which he called ”part of a campaign by Israeli security services to undermine officers and members of preventive security.”
The documents found in the raid were addressed to Rashid Abu Shbak, the deputy head of the security service, which is charged with preventing such attacks, the newspaper said.
It added that according to an analysis by military intelligence, Hamas believes the PA initiated the Cairo talks because of Hamas’s recent surge in popularity among Palestinians accompanied by a
decline in the PA’s power.
”Its position has been harmed, most of its institutions have collapsed, its infrastructure has been destroyed and its ranks are rife with division,” the Hamas document said. – Sapa-AFP