Israel said on Monday it would transfer to the occupied West Bank dozens of pro-Fatah Palestinians who fled the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip after clashes with the Islamist group, reversing a decision to send them home.
About 180 members of the Helles clan, one of the most powerful Gaza families associated with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah faction, sought refuge in Israel on Saturday after a fierce assault by Hamas on their Gaza City neighbourhood.
The Israeli army sent about 30 members of the clan back to the Gaza Strip on Sunday, citing a request from Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
"Israeli authorities halted the process, however, as they received information that they were being arrested by Hamas and that their lives were in immediate danger," the Israeli army said in a statement.
The tug-of-war over the Helles clan underscored lingering resentment within Fatah more than a year after Hamas routed Abbas's faction and violently seized control of the Gaza Strip.
Many Fatah leaders in the West Bank still blame members of the Helles clan, one of the most heavily-armed in the Gaza Strip, for not resisting Hamas's takeover in June 2007.
The Israeli army initially said it had planned to transport the members of the Helles clan to the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Abbas's government is based.
But Palestinian officials said they were being taken instead to the desert town of Jericho, near the border with Jordan.
Hamas said it carried out the raid on the Helles compound on Saturday to detain men it accused of carrying out a July 25 bombing that killed five Hamas members and a girl.
Eleven Palestinians were killed and more than 90 were wounded during the raid in the fiercest fighting since Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007.
The Israeli army said several members of the Helles family would not be transported to the West Bank because they were still undergoing treatment for injuries at Israel's Barzilai hospital near the Gaza Strip.
Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the Helles family was welcome to return to the Gaza Strip. "We assured them of their safety," he said.
But Abu Zuhri said the fact that family members fled to Israel "proved they had been involved in breaking the law."
Tensions between Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions, surged after the July 25 bombing, which triggered tit-for-tat crackdowns in the Gaza Strip by Hamas and in the West Bank by Fatah.
Officials at Birzeit University near the West Bank city of Ramallah suspended lectures on Monday after a clash between pro-Hamas and pro-Fatah student. Some students were lightly injured.