Palestinians form rival governments

JERUSALEM -- Leaders of the Hamas and Fatah parties began operating parallel Palestinian governments yesterday after days of intense factional fighting that have sharply defined the political and geographic divisions undermining the Palestinian drive for statehood.

As street battles in the Gaza Strip gave way to calm, Palestinian analysts and Israeli officials said Hamas's swift military conquest of the strip has badly fractured the Palestinian territories and the government established 13 years ago to run them.

The hardening differences could be seen in both Gaza and the West Bank, the two increasingly distant pieces of a future Palestinian state now administered by rival armed parties whose leaders each professed yesterday to be conducting official government business.

The division has broad humanitarian and security implications for the Palestinians, for Israel and for foreign donor nations, which are weighing whether to end economic sanctions against the Palestinian Authority now that it no longer includes Hamas.

"Two governments -- one in Gaza, one in the West Bank -- is what we will have now," said Ali Jarbawi, a political science professor at Bir Zeit University, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. "The international embargo will be lifted against the government in the West Bank, and Gaza will be left to starve."

At his new base in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah named Salam Fayyad, an independent lawmaker admired by the Bush administration, as prime minister of his new emergency government.

Fayyad, a former World Bank official, was finance minister in the Hamas-led unity government formed in March, which neither Israel nor the United States recognized.

But Hamas officials in Gaza have refused to recognize the order Abbas gave Thursday disbanding the Hamas-led Cabinet. Abbas fired Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, who met yesterday with Hamas-affiliated security forces and carried out other official business in his Gaza office.

"I don't know how these new people will go about doing their jobs," said Ayman Taha, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza. "This emergency government has no legitimacy on the ground, and where is the army that is supposed to support it? We have one here."

As flag-waving Hamas supporters thronged the streets of Gaza City yesterday, Islamic militants in black masks took over one of Abbas's offices in Gaza and rifled through his residence.

For the first time in days, Gaza residents emerged from their homes to buy food, walk in streets free of roadblocks, and celebrate Hamas's victory. Gazans visited some of the battered former Fatah security posts and Abbas's seaside compound, which Hamas gunmen had vandalized after seizing control of it Thursday.

Hamas offered amnesty to its defeated foes as violence tapered off from five days of bloodshed. Soon after Hamas completed the takeover, Haniyeh urged self-restraint by Hamas followers and urged captors to release BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, who was abducted in March by gunmen with a history of criminal activities.

The seizure of the strip by the Hamas military followed a campaign that killed more than 100 Palestinians this week.

The armed Islamic movement's victory was the culmination of 18 months of periodic fighting with Fatah, whose monopoly on Palestinian political power ended with Hamas's victory in January 2006 parliamentary elections. The parties have been battling for control of the various security services, their rivalry fueled by stark ideological differences over how to achieve a Palestinian state.

Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist and is classified as a terrorist organization by Israel, the United States, and the European Union. Fatah, the secular party of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, supports peace talks with Israel.

After Hamas's election victory, Israel suspended the monthly transfer of $55 million in tax revenue that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, an amount equal to roughly half the government's monthly payroll.

The Quartet of Middle East peace interlocutors -- the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations -- also cut off financial aid until Hamas recognizes Israel and renounced violence. Yesterday, the group endorsed Abbas's decision to dissolve the unity government.

The Palestinian economy has plummeted, and the government has been unable to fully pay salaries for months. The crisis has squeezed Hamas's power base in Gaza hardest because a far larger portion of the strip's 1.4 million residents rely on government paychecks than do those in the West Bank. "We're evaluating what this new reality will mean," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry. "This is not just a challenge for Israel, but also for the international community as a whole."

The Bush administration has pressed Israel to work with Abbas and might ask Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel during a White House meeting next week to release hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Palestinian tax revenue so Abbas could make up back salaries. That would help him consolidate support in the West Bank, where yesterday gunmen from Fatah kidnapped at least nine Hamas supporters and ransacked the party's local legislative offices and social service centers in several major cities.

The split between Hamas and Fatah in the government, Regev said, "may open options for us to work with moderate Palestinians."

Early yesterday, Hamas gunmen rounded up senior Fatah leaders in Gaza, including the heads of the presidential guard and the Palestinian National Forces and the party's general secretary in the strip. Hamas officials called the prisoners "treacherous collaborators," a label suggesting a person had worked with Israel. The label often means a death sentence in the Palestinian territories.

But a few hours after seizing at least four senior Fatah officials and six others from the party, Hamas gunmen announced a general amnesty for all Fatah forces.