World

Palestinian In-Fighting Escalates

October 3, 2006 / 10:00 AM EDT / CBS/AP

Gunmen linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement threatened Tuesday to assassinate leaders of the rival Hamas group — signaling a further escalation after 10 Palestinians were killed in three days of Hamas-Fatah fighting.

Fatah gunmen issued a leaflet making the threat, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger. The hit list includes Khaled Mashaal, the top leader of Hamas based in Syria and two senior officials in Gaza. The leaflet described these leaders as traitors. Hamas, in turn, accused Fatah of launching a coup.

The violence was the worst since Hamas took office in March and heightened fears of a full-scale civil war. The fighting came after efforts to bring Fatah into the government broke down last week.

In other developments:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was visiting Saudi Arabia and Egypt Tuesday and will hold talks in Israel Wednesday. Berger reports both Israeli and Palestinian officials are welcoming the Rice mission, hoping U.S. involvement will help resume the peace talks that collapsed after the election of Hamas in January.

Israeli settlers have expanded 31 unauthorized outposts across the West Bank in recent months, a settler watchdog group reported Tuesday. Peace Now says the settlers took advantage of Israel's recent focus on its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon to build permanent structures in the outposts in their effort to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state on the land.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would consider peace talks with Syria, a cabinet minister told the Jerusalem Post, if Syria promised to recognize Israel's right to exist and entered the talks without other pre-conditions. Senior Labor Party member and Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer says such talks would depend on an official approach by Syria, which has been sending conflicting messages about negotiations with Israel.

Abbas, who had hoped a broader and more moderate coalition would end an international aid boycott of the Hamas government, is running out of options to end the crisis.

Abbas had considered calling early elections, but a new poll Tuesday indicated Fatah would tie with Hamas if a vote was held now. The poll also indicated that voters consider Abbas less trustworthy than Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

The threat to kill Hamas leaders was made in a statement by the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent Fatah offshoot. A caller reading from the statement told The Associated Press that Al Aqsa would try to assassinate Interior Minister Said Siyam, Hamas militia chief Youssef Zahar and the group's supreme leader in exile, Khaled Mashaal.

"We are going to implement the rule of the people and the revolution by executing the heads of this seditious group," the caller said.

The latest round of fighting began Sunday, when Hamas militiamen used force to put down protests by civil servants and members of the security forces who demanded payment of salaries.

The confrontations triggered armed clashes between the 3,500-strong Hamas militia and the Fatah-dominated security forces over the weekend. In all, 10 people were killed and more than 100 wounded.

The violence also spread to the West Bank where Fatah militants responded by torching the Cabinet building in Ramallah and trashing Hamas offices.

On Monday, Fatah militants shot at bodyguards of Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer of Hamas as they rode in a government car, injuring two of them. Shaer was not present during the attack. Hospital officials said a Fatah militant was also injured.

The Palestinian Authority's 165,000 government employees have largely gone unpaid for seven months because of the international aid freeze. Many of the civil servants have been on strike for the past month, though compliance in schools has been spotty, particularly in Gaza.

On Tuesday, Fatah gunmen closed several schools in central Gaza by force. The gunmen also blocked a major intersection, shouting "Down, down with Hamas," burning tires and garbage and shooting in the air.

Ghazi Hamad, a spokesman for the Hamas government, called for a new effort to establish a national unity government with Fatah, but also condemned the civil servants' strike.

"I know there is suffering and there is a big problem," Hamad told Israel Radio, speaking in Hebrew. "When there is a strike you don't go to work but you don't cause problems and riots all the time. This is not acceptable to us."

During the first eight months of 2006, Jewish settlers expanded 31 of their unauthorized outposts, building permanent structures in 12 of them, Peace Now said. The settlers used Israel's 34-day war in Lebanon this summer and the government's decision to postpone a West Bank withdrawal to intensify their activity, said Yariv Oppenheimer, Peace Now's director.

"Since the government has put off its plan to withdraw from the West Bank and the evacuation of outposts, this has given the settlers a boost to continue expanding their communities," Oppenheimer said. "They are trying to build permanent settlements."

Palestinians said the illegal Israeli settlement activity stood in the way of their plan to set up a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

"The fact that the Israeli government continues to expand settlements and outposts is undermining all efforts to revive the peace process one day," said Saeb Erekat, a lawmaker and confidant of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. "We urge the United States to exert maximum efforts to ... stop settlement expansion."

A spokeswoman for the Yesha settlers' council, Emily Amrusy, said the outposts were expanded mostly to add structures for schools or to meet security needs.