'Hamas has widened Palestinian divide'

Hamas has widened the divide among Palestinians by setting bolder terms for unity talks with Fatah rivals after Israel's attack on Gaza, an aide to the Palestinian President said yesterday.

"We listened to a plan to complete and consecrate the split" between the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the West Bank controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abed-Rabbo said of a speech by Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

Mr Meshaal said on Wednesday, after a 22-day Israeli offensive in which 1,300 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, that Hamas would not allow aid and reconstruction money into "corrupt hands" of those who "collaborated", in an apparent reference to President Abbas's Fatah group.

He demanded the Western-backed Abbas end security cooperation with Israel and free Hamas militants from Fatah's jails in the West Bank before Palestinian unity talks, deadlocked for months, could resume.

Mr Abed-Rabbo said Mr Meshaal's comments seemed like a conspiracy meant to widen a rift between the two Palestinian groups, divided since Hamas seized control of Gaza from Fatah forces in 2007, a year after winning a parliamentary election.

He told a news conference in the West Bank town of Ramallah that Mr Meshaal's conditions for reconciliation talks had crossed a line by putting Hamas rule in Gaza above the goal of achieving Palestinian unity.

Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel and has proclaimed victory from the Israeli offensive despite heavy losses, says President Abbas has got nowhere by arresting militants as he pursued US-brokered talks that have failed to achieve a goal of setting up an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Some Palestinian analysts said Hamas seemed to have set a priority since the war with Israel of keeping control of Gaza rather than trying to mend fences with Fatah in the West Bank, a territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war.

In his remarks from Damascus, Mr Meshaal also called on Palestinians in the West Bank to "rise in revolt and resist" against Israel, rather than pursue peace talks.