Special to WorldTribune.com

RAMALLAH — Leading Hamas politicians have been targeted in the Fatah-ruled West Bank.

Palestinian sources said suspected Fatah gunmen have attacked leading Hamas politicians in the West Bank. They said the Fatah campaign marked a response to the Hamas crackdown on the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip.

“This was a direct attempt to assassinate me, not just a threat to silence me,” Palestinian Legislative Council deputy speaker Hassan Kreishe said.

Kreishe, deemed a leading Hamas politician, said he came under gunfire as he drove from his home in the West Bank city of Tulkarm on Sept. 4. The legislator, a critic of the Palestinian Authority, said four bullets struck his car, but he was not injured.

“It seems that my straightforwardness has angered some politicians,” Kreishe said.

This marked the second assassination attempt against Hamas in the West Bank in as many months. On Aug. 5, another leading Hamas member, Abdul Satar Qassem, survived an ambush by gunmen near his home in Nablus. Six days earlier, Qassem, a professor at An Najah University, was assaulted and threatened during a television interview.

“There is no doubt that the attackers are members of the PA, but I do not know the apparatus they worked for,” Qassem said.

A Palestinian group said the assaults marked a campaign against dissidents in the West Bank, in which 74 Hamas operatives were arrested over 48 hours. The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, known as MADA, called on the PA to investigate the shootings.

“MADA is gravely concerned by the repetition of such violations of freedom of expression, which have reached the extremely worrisome level of assassination attempts,” the Palestinian center said.

  Abdul Satar Qassem, An Najah University, Assassination attempts on Hamas leaders spurred by their crackdown, Hassan Kreishe, Tulkarm