RAMALLAH, West Bank — The President Mahmoud Abbas' his swipe at his Hamas rivals comes at a sensitive time, with the Palestinians divided between rival governments and U.S.-brokered indirect peace talks with Israel getting under way. Abbas said his security forces have confiscated most of the smuggled weapons.
Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas' forces three years ago, and the two factions have been at odds since. Israel fears Hamas could also stage a violent takeover in the West Bank, and those security concerns, along with the Palestinian factions' failure to reconcile, are likely to be key issues in the new round of peace talks.
In a newspaper interview published Thursday, Abbas accused Hamas of undermining efforts to reconcile the two factions by challenging his administration's power in the West Bank.
“What they are doing is smuggling weapons and explosives and storing them in the West Bank,' he told the London-based Arabic paper Sharq al-Awsat. “On a daily basis, we find caches of weapons and big amounts of explosives.'
Despite Abbas' allegations, Hamas appears to be significantly weakened in the West Bank after a lengthy crackdown. Dozens of Hamas militants are in either Israeli or Palestinian jails, and most arms busts by Abbas' forces yield only small weapons caches.
Omar Abdel-Raziq, a Hamas lawmaker in the West Bank, called Abbas' allegations “absolutely not true.' He accused the president of trying to curry favor with the Americans and Israelis.
Israeli defense officials have expressed satisfaction with the performance of Abbas' security forces in recent months. Palestinian forces trained in a U.S.-sponsored program now maintain law and order in most West Bank cities. There was no direct Israeli response to Abbas' comments, but the defense officials said they were unaware of any significant arms stockpiling by Hamas in the West Bank.