GAZA CITY, 4 June 2006 — The Fatah movement formed a new militia and deployed it in the streets of the West Bank town of Jenin yesterday, in a show of force against the Hamas government.

The new unit of 2,500 members is Fatah’s answer to a militia of 3,000 Hamas activists that the government deployed in the Gaza Strip last month over President Mahmoud Abbas’ objections. The presence of a new Fatah militia ratchets up tensions between Fatah and Hamas that have already erupted in deadly violence and raised the specter of civil war.

“It is unacceptable for any faction to field a militia in support of the security apparatus,” Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer of Hamas told a news conference in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

Shaer said the government would resolve the dispute in dialogue with Fatah.

More than 2,000 members of the new unit gathered in Jenin yesterday morning wearing white headbands and black T-shirts emblazoned with “Special Protection Unit” on the back, and a photo of the iconic Palestinian leader, the late Yasser Arafat, on the front. Some 60 to 70 were armed with assault rifles, and dozens carried pistols.

A Fatah leader in Jenin, Ata Abu Rameileh, said the aim of the force was to back the official Palestinian security branches, which is dominated by movement members.

“You are here to protect your people and the Palestinian Authority institutions,” Abu Rameileh exhorted the force over a loudspeaker at the local high school where it gathered. “We are loyal to our people, not like those who have sold themselves to Arab and non-Arab capitals,” he said, in a thinly veiled reference to Hamas.

The new fighters raised their arms in a salute and shouted “Fatah, Fatah.” The force then split into 23 groups that paraded throughout the streets of Jenin.

Unless Hamas disbands its new force, Fatah will create similar units across the West Bank and Gaza, Fatah officials said.

About 3,000 Fatah activists are training in Gaza in preparation for possible deployment, though no decision has been taken to activate a force there, a Palestinian security official said.

Fatah officials said they have information that Hamas, whose power base is in Gaza, has begun organizing a militia in the West Bank. Hamas has not confirmed this.

Yesterday, Nabil Amr, an adviser to Abbas, reiterated that the president would not travel to Gaza unless Hamas dissolved its new militia.

Hamas, ignoring a presidential veto, activated the force in mid-May after Abbas took de facto command of all the powerful Palestinian security branches. The unit is monitored by Jamal Abu Samhadana, a key player in ongoing rocket attacks on Israel and a suspect in the deadly 2003 bombing of a US convoy in the Gaza Strip.

Shaer, the deputy prime minister, told a news conference in the West Bank town of Ramallah that the Hamas militia had been integrated into the official police force, and wasn’t operating independently. But that wouldn’t necessarily appease Abbas, who has said he wants the militiamen off the streets.

Fatah deployed its new militia just hours after a senior member of Hamas’ military wing was shot in the chest in a drive-by shooting.

Hamas did not directly blame anyone for the attack on Abdel Hadi Siyam, 35, early yesterday, but officials said Palestinian security forces fired at him in the same Gaza City neighborhood two months ago.

Control over security forces is a key element in the power struggle between Abbas, who was elected separately last year and hopes to restart peace talks with Israel, and Hamas, whose violent ideology has provoked crippling international economic sanctions.

The halt of foreign funds has kept the new government from paying welfare allowances and salaries to 165,000 civil servants over the past three months, prompting outbursts of violence and protests.

About 300 protesters gathered in the West Bank town of Ramallah yesterday to protest withheld welfare payments, some setting tires ablaze in flames of acrid smoke.

Finance Minister Omar Abdel Razek said yesterday that the government would pay one month’s salary tomorrow to 40,000 low-income civil servants. Advances that Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh promised to the remaining 125,000 will be paid later because the government doesn’t have money to pay them now, he said.

— With input from agencies