Fatah

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - Angry arguments over elections and money erupted yesterday between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah activists on the second day of the movement’s convention. Fatah’s first conference in 20 years is meant to elect new leaders, clean up the party’s corrupt image, and make it more competitive with its bitter rival, the Islamic militant Hamas. However, generational disputes and regional rivalries between the West Bank and Gaza burst into the open yesterday, casting doubt on the party’s ability to carry out sweeping internal reforms.

Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah agreed on Sunday on a new timetable for a power-sharing deal that envisions elections in about six months, officials from both sides said. Reconciliation efforts have stalled repeatedly, and it is unclear if the latest agreement, brokered by Egypt and signed in Cairo, would end the impasse. The Islamic militant Hamas seized Gaza from Fatah's leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in 2007, leaving him with only the West Bank. Earlier this year, Abbas and Hamas' supreme leader, Khaled Mashaal, agreed that the Palestinian president should...

GAZA CITY -- Clashes and mass protests erupted yesterday across the West Bank and Gaza Strip between followers of the militant group Hamas and Fatah rivals, after a Hamas leader accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of treachery. The two sides traded gunfire and hurled stones and firebombs, escalating a fierce power struggle between militant and moderate factions focused on control over Palestinian security forces. Abbas said yesterday he would not allow the accusations to plunge the Palestinians into civil war. The unrest followed the president's recent moves to take control of all six...

CAIRO (AP) — The Hamas prime minister of Gaza today expressed support for Syrian protesters seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad, the first time a senior Hamas leader has publicly rebuked the group's longtime patron. Ismail Haniyeh said after Friday prayers at Egypt's Al-Azhar Mosque that Hamas commends ‘‘the brave Syrian people that are moving toward democracy and reform. " Assad has long hosted and supported leaders of the Islamic militant movement, which rules the Gaza Strip, but the group has significantly reduced the presence of its exiled leaders in...

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- A group of young Palestinian activists yesterday said it is splitting from the ruling Fatah movement and forming its own party ahead of next month's parliamentary election, a bitter blow to Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas. Kadoura Fares, a leader of the young activists, told reporters at the Ramallah election headquarters that they had presented their own list of candidates for the election, just an hour before the deadline for registering candidates. The move came minutes after the wife of jailed uprising leader Marwan Barghouthi entered election headquarters to formally...

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- What does an out-of-work Palestinian security official, fresh from a devastating election defeat by his own brother, do with the time on his hands? Jibril Rajoub decided to go back to school to study his adversary. He has the skills -- perhaps even more so than his teacher. Rajoub spent 17 years in Israeli jails, speaks fluent Hebrew and served as a negotiator with Israel for a decade. Now he's at the West Bank campus of Al Quds, a Palestinian university, pursuing a master's degree in Israel studies.

GAZA CITY -- Gunmen fired on the Palestinian foreign minister's convoy yesterday, and militants launched mortar shells at President Mahmoud Abbas's office in a daylong wave of factional violence that killed three people. Despite a cease-fire accord between Fatah and Hamas, exchanges of gunfire continued to rage across northern Gaza throughout the night. This morning, gunmen waged a street battle outside Abbas's home. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused Abbas of inflaming the political crisis by calling for early elections.

GAZA CITY -- Thousands of Palestinian workers left postal banks carrying $100 bills yesterday, their first payday since March, as the Hamas-led government dipped into suitcases full of cash its officials carried into Gaza to circumvent a Western aid cutoff. Payday joy was tempered by the knowledge that the sanctions have forced the Hamas-led government into bankruptcy and hamstrung its activities. The West demands that Hamas recognize Israel, renounce violence, and accept previous peace accords, but Hamas refuses.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Gunmen from the rival Hamas and Fatah movements battled in Gaza City for a third straight day yesterday, firing mortar shells and grenades in clashes that killed seven people in the increasingly bloody power struggle over the Palestinian government. The deaths brought to 25 the number of Palestinians killed since late Thursday, with at least 68 people wounded and efforts to forge a coalition government at a standstill. The latest fighting, which started Thursday after a Hamas activist was killed in a bombing, has been among the...

GAZA CITY -- Palestinian security officers stormed a building where an Italian hostage was being held yesterday, freeing the man in a shoot-out with his kidnappers. It was a rare show of force in a wave of kidnappings and shoot-outs in the Gaza Strip that has embarrassed Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, threatening to undermine his Fatah party in Jan. 25 legislative elections and boost the Islamic militant group Hamas. The hostage, Alessandro Bernardini, was abducted early yesterday in the town of Khan Younis.

GAZA - The Palestinian militant group Hamas announced yesterday that its political leader, Khaled Meshal, would not seek reelection, opening the door to a possible leadership contest and adding to the uncertainty enveloping Hamas at a time of regional turmoil. Meshal, who has led the group's political bureau since 1996 and is the face of Hamas's leadership, told the Shura Council, the group's highest decision-making authority, that he preferred not to run in elections scheduled in the coming months, Hamas said in a written statement.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinians launched a campaign yesterday to rally support for UN recognition as an independent state, planning demonstrations in the Palestinian territories and worldwide before asking the world body to accept them as a full member state later this month. The public relations blitz helps set up a diplomatic showdown at the United Nations, where Israel and the United States are leading opposition to the bid, and adds to concerns in Israel that mass demonstrations could turn violent.

THE PALESTINIAN leadership has made clear its intentions to declare statehood unilaterally and seek admission to the United Nations this fall. While such a move might score the Palestinians a political win by serving to isolate Israel even further in the international arena, any victory will be symbolic at best. In practice, the situation on the ground for Palestinians is unlikely to change or improve. Such a unilateral move threatens to unravel the delicate thread of legal and administrative cooperation that has been woven between Israel and the...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Muhammad Hassan Shama, a founder of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, died yesterday of a stroke after decades as an influential yet little-known figure at the helm of the Palestinian militant organization. He was 76. Mr. Shama, revered by Hamas loyalists but nearly anonymous outside Gaza, was one of the eight founders of the Islamist group in the 1980s. After his death, Hamas publicly announced yesterday for the first time that Mr. Shama had been the leader of the secretive Shura Council, its top governing body.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — After four years of turbulent rule in the Gaza Strip, the Islamic militant group Hamas is weighing a new strategy of not directly participating in future governments even if it wins elections — an approach aimed at avoiding isolation by the world community and allowing for continued economic aid. Hamas officials said the idea has gained favor in recent closed meetings of the secretive movement’s leadership in the...

AMMAN, Jordan — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sought to defend his new unity government with the militant Hamas movement yesterday, saying criticism by President Obama represented a “wrong understanding’’ of the deal. Abbas’s comments followed talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in the Jordanian capital and were noted in a royal palace statement. They were his first remarks on major speeches the US president delivered in recent days. Last week, Obama outlined his policy on the Middle East, roiled by popular Arab uprisings, and endorsed...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas forces battled Fatah-linked fighters with mortars and machine guns in a crowded Gaza neighborhood yesterday, leaving at least four dead in the worst Palestinian infighting in nine months. About 80 people were injured, 12 of them children, hospital officials said. Explosions and gunfire could be heard throughout the day in the Shijaiyeh neighborhood, a stronghold of the Fatah-allied Hilles faction. Hamas accuses the clan of hiding suspects behind a car bombing last week that killed five activists of the Islamic militant group.

NABLUS, West Bank -- Masked gunmen loyal to Yasser Arafat broke up a conference of reformers from his Fatah movement who were calling for a revolution, as the veteran Palestinian leader faced new, sharp divisions among his people. The incident yesterday in Nablus was the latest in weeks of internal Palestinian unrest. The unrest centers on charges of widespread corruption in Arafat's administration and beneath-the-surface frustration with the lack of progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state or economic development after four years of bloody conflict with Israel.

JERUSALEM — A diplomatic message released by WikiLeaks yesterday suggested there was close cooperation between Israel and forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas when rival Hamas militants overran the Gaza Strip three years ago. The disclosure could embarrass Abbas and his Fatah movement, which Hamas has accused of working with the Israelis. Abbas’s standing among Palestinians has already been weakened by his failure to make progress in peacemaking with Israel. The June 13, 2007, memo from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, citing a conversation that took place during the civil war in Gaza...

DAMASCUS — Jimmy Carter said yesterday that Palestinians are “living in a cage’’ in Gaza and that the militant group Hamas must be included in all major efforts for peace. The former president was in Syria with an international group of veteran statesmen known as the Elders, which includes Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland. “We believe that Hamas should be included in all the major efforts to peace. . . . It is part of the Palestinian people,’’ Carter said.