The Hamas government on Friday recalled a controversial paramilitary force from the streets of Gaza on the second day of cross-party talks to resolve deadly Palestinian feuding and a political crisis.
The move came one day after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened to call a referendum to end the deadly rivalry between Hamas and his former ruling Fatah party that has focused on security control.
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, who has resolutely backed the force vetoed by Abbas, however, downplayed the withdrawal as a ”redeployment” that was intended only to ”consolidate unity and alleviate tension”.
Ten people have been killed in recent clashes between Hamas and the Abbas-controlled security services, which spiralled in the 11 days that the Islamists deployed the new paramilitaries, sparking talk of possible civil war.
”We have withdrawn our forces from all locations after a decision from interior minister Said Siam,” a commander of the force, Yussuf al-Zahar, announced, as regular security forces deployed in their place.
But Haniya vowed Hamas would not scrap its plans for the force, which numbers between 3 000 and 4 000 officers, as a wing of the regular police.
”The cause of tension is not the creation of this force,” he said. ”It is a police force, which will wear police uniforms. We will not renounce it or retreat,” the premier told Hamas supporters in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
The streets of Gaza City were calm on the Muslim day of rest, with the bearded paramilitaries of Hamas nowhere to be seen as regular security officers took their place.
Nearby, however, hundreds of the withdrawn gunmen gathered on a field next to a Gaza City mosque. They marched in formation and conducted training exercises, with commander al-Zahar in the lead, waving an M16 in the air.
”These forces will be totally ready to support the security forces when called upon to do so,” al-Zahar said.
The withdrawal of the force, drawn principally from Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, was welcomed by Fatah and Abbas’s office.
”Their presence was illegal and illegitimate to begin with, but we welcome this move to help the Palestinian people by removing of one of the central reasons of the tension,” said Fatah spokesperson Tawfiq Abu Khussa.
”This is a small step, but it’s good. What is needed now is to get rid of this force or include members of this force on an individual basis into the standing police and army,” said an Abbas administrative official.
Much of the rivalry between Fatah and Hamas since the Islamists’ election victory on January 25 has centred on control of the security services, which remain the remit of Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority.
The Hamas government deployed the new force in Gaza on May 17 while Abbas — who had vetoed its creation as a separate security branch — was in Europe.
In response, Abbas ordered the regular security services, dominated by loyalists of his Fatah movement, which was thrashed in the January election, to step up its presence, filling Gaza streets with guns.
Friday’s announcement came as cross-party crisis talks convened for a second day in order to discuss a way out of political quagmire and resolve a crippling fiscal debt in the wake of Western aid cuts.
In a bid to end the crisis, Abbas gave the factions 10 days to agree on a common platform or see him submit to referendum in 40 days a proposal from jailed faction leaders on a way out.
If Hamas were to accept the document, which advocates a national-unity government and a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including east Jerusalem, it would amount to implicit recognition of the Jewish state.
The Islamists have so far resisted enormous international pressure to change their hard-line stance.
But Haniya was chilly towards the idea of a plebiscite, saying only that his government would assess the ”legal and constitutional” aspects of a referendum.
He said ”the people made their choice in opting for the Hamas political programme” in January’s Parliamentary elections.
A Hamas leader in the West Bank said the faction agreed with 90% of the document, but expressed reservations about references to ”international resolutions” as a basis to end the conflict with Israel. — AFP
