U.S. guiding Palestinian preparations to destroy Hamas inroads in West Bank
Friday, June 5, 2009 E-Mail this story Free Headline Alerts
RAMALLAH Ñ The Palestinian Authority is preparing a comprehensive assault against Hamas's military wing throughout the West Bank.
Officials said PA security forces, directed by U.S. security envoy Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, was preparing to move from city to city in an effort to seize Hamas weapons caches and eradicate the Islamic military structure in the West Bank.
They said the PA effort has begun in the West Bank city of Kalkilya, where Hamas gunmen engaged in two battles with Palestinian security officers in less than a week.
"There's a lot of pressure on the PA from Dayton to expand this [anti-Hamas] operation," an official said.
On June 4, PA security forces attacked another Hamas safe house in Kalkilya in a battle in which at least three people were killed. The safe house, located underneath a courtyard, was said to contain a Hamas cell led by Mohammed Attiya, a senior member of the military wing in the West Bank.
"Our men will resist any attempt to arrest them by [PA Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas's treacherous forces because they are working on behalf of the Zionist enemy," Hamas military spokesman Abu Obeida said. "We, nor our people, trust these forces."
In the June 4 shootout, which began with an attempt to arrest Islamist fugitives, two Hamas fighters and an officer of the PA Preventive Security Apparatus were killed. One of the fighters was said to have been wearing a suicide explosive belt. PSA has been the lead agency in the PA crackdown on the Hamas military infrastructure.
This marked the second gunfight between Hamas and the PA in Kalkilya. On May 31, six people, three of them PA security officers, were killed in a seven-hour siege of a Hamas safehouse in Kalkilya.
Two of the casualties were identified as Hamas commander in Kalkilya, Mohammed Al Samman, and his deputy, Mohammed Yassin. Officials said several members of the cell escaped and took refuge in a safe house controlled by Attiya.
Officials said Dayton wants elite PA security forces to expand the anti-Hamas operation to Tulkarm. Like Kalkilya, Tulkarm is located along the 1967 border with Israel and contains a large Hamas and Islamic Jihad concentration.
Dayton has urged the PA to use newly-trained units from the Presidential Guard and National Security Forces to raid Hamas strongholds. Over the last year, about 1,500 PA and NSF officers underwent a four-month training course outside Amman, Jordan.
Hamas has been ordered to resist any PA crackdown. Officials said PA security forces were alerted to the possibility that Hamas would use suicide bombers as well as women and children for attacks.
"We are getting stronger and we will show no mercy to those who harm our leaders and our warriors," Abu Obeida said. "We call on our fighters to treat the Abbas gangs as if they were the forces of the [Israeli] occupation."