GAZA CITY, 19 May 2006 — Rival Palestinian security forces flexed their muscles yesterday as a dangerous standoff between Hamas and Fatah groups showed no sign of a resolution.

Thousands of security officers denounced a rival militia, dispatched by the Hamas government a day earlier in a bid to restore order to the territory, and pledge support for beleaguered Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh insisted the unit was “set up in keeping with the law, the basic law and direct agreement with president Abbas,” drawing quick denial from the presidency.

“You were in the resistance. Today you are protecting the nation, security and the people,” Haniyeh told hundreds of recruits of the new paramilitary.

Tensions spread beyond Gaza, as Hamas Deputy Premier Nasserdine Al-Shaer cut short a tour in the West Bank when Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades gunmen, loosely affiliated to Abbas’ Fatah faction, opened fire and blocked his vehicle.

Al-Aqsa supporters have said they will have no truck with the new force which began its operations in Gaza on Wednesday, despite Hamas Interior Minister Said Siam’s insistence that its ranks were open to all.

Abbas, as Palestinian Authority president, is the overall commander of the security services. Their main branches are dominated by Fatah supporters despite Hamas’ victory in a January parliamentary election.

Abbas’ office made clear the president’s anger at the deployment of the Hamas forces at a time when he was in Europe — ironically to lobby for an end to the international community’s isolation of the Hamas-led government.

“Any situation in which two different forces, seemingly taking orders from separate authorities, are attempting to take charge of maintaining law and order in Gaza, is untenable,” his office said.

Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina denied there was any agreement with Hamas over creating a new force, only on incorporating gunmen into the existing security forces commanded by the Palestinian Authority.

“There was no agreement between President Abbas and Prime Minister Haniyeh on forming a special security force of armed Palestinian factions. It is impossible under Palestinian basic law to form a new force,” he said.

A senior official in Abbas’ office went further by warning that the deployment of the new force “could lead to a civil war.”

In Jerusalem, an Israeli official said Tel Aviv was prepared to release Palestinian tax revenues into a proposed international aid mechanism to avert the collapse of the Palestinian health sector and to pay some salaries, an Israeli official said yesterday.

Allowing the tax revenues to be used for Palestinian health sector salaries would mark an about-face for the Jewish state. Last week, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Israel would not use the money for salaries.

But Israel has been under heavy European pressure to release the tax revenues amid fears that the Palestinian health sector was on the verge of complete collapse.

It remains unclear whether any of the other sectors of the Palestinian Authority, including teachers and security personnel, would be paid. The Palestinian Authority employs 165,000 people, an estimated 11,000 of whom work in the health sector.

The Israeli official said several donor nations have raised objections to paying teachers’ salaries since the curriculum in the schools is controlled by the Hamas-led Education Ministry.

— Additional input from agencies