Abbas wins US backing as Fatah stages revenge raids

The United States made clear yesterday it would give aid to the new emergency Palestinian government as hundreds of Fatah activists conducted reprisal raids against Hamas officials and offices in the West Bank.

The US Consul General in Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, told the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, that his new government will be granted a lifting of the boycott imposed 15 months ago after Hamas won the Palestinian parliamentary elections last year.

Related articles

• Bernard Wasserstein: The divided states of Palestine
• Donald Macintyre: Blood flows as the dust settles in Gaza's civil war. And on the West Bank they mourn
• Search the news archive for more stories

The move means that American aid will be channelled to the West Bank but not to Gaza, where Hamas remains in control after its military wing secured victory over Fatah forces in five days of savage armed conflict last week.

Meanwhile, there were renewed hopes that the kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston could be released in the wake of a declaration by Hamas's armed wing on Friday that they had begun "practical steps" to end the correspondent's three-month ordeal. In Damascus the exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal declared: "I am confident that those holding Alan Johnston will realise that keeping him captive doesn't serve the national interest."

In the West Bank, Fatah gunmen stormed Hamas-controlled institutions in Ramallah and Nablus. Armed men from Fatah attempted to kidnap the Hamas deputy speaker of the parliament, Hassan Kreisheh, but were foiled by Fatah employees at the parliament building in Ramallah. As other armed Fatah men climbed on to the roof of the parliament building, shouting "Hamas out" and firing into the air, still more took over the Education Ministry and the Prime Minister's office.

In Nablus, Fatah gunmen seized the Hamas-controlled city council and planted the Fatah flag on the top of the building. News agencies reported that Fatah supporters also kidnapped seven Hamas activists. Samir Hamad, a local pharmacist and community leader in the al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah, said he had personally intervened to secure the release of two Hamas activists kidnapped on Friday in the Fatah-dominated camp. "There are good relations between the factions here, and we want to keep it that way," he declared.

But Samir al-Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said that 150 Hamas supporters have been "abducted" in the West Bank in what he called a "real coup and terrorism". He warned that Hamas would take "all steps to end these crimes".

Palestinians in Gaza were said to be looting scrap metal and furniture at abandoned police positions on the Palestinian side of the closed Erez border between Gaza and Israel. And at least three people were reportedly injured in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis as Hamas forces continued a round-up to seize weapons not held by their own forces.

The Israeli Interior Minister, Avi Dichter, said Israel would continue to ensure essential humanitarian aid was allowed to pass into Gaza. He said that Hamas's victory in Gaza last week had signalled the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, which was formed after the Oslo peace accords in the 1990s. The "new reality", he added, had created opportunities for Israel. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip should be treated as a "terror entity", which could mean Israeli forces deploying along Gaza's border with Egypt to halt weapons smuggling into the strip.

While the Gaza-Israel border has been closed, Israel allowed some senior Fatah figures to travel out of Gaza to the West Bank through Israel yesterday.