GAZA CITY, 14 January 2007 — A Palestinian official revealed yesterday that the Hamas and Fatah factions were inching closer the goal of forming a national unity government. In another important development, Palestinian civil servants agreed yesterday to end a months-old strike.

Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer said the deal was the “first of a number of accords on matters linked to the formation of a government of national unity that should be announced in the near future.”

He pointed to a “deal on internal security that is now being drafted.”

The news that 80,000 state employees would return to work was the latest encouraging development on the Palestinian front as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel in a bid to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

On Friday, it was disclosed that mediators were working to arrange a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Damascus-based leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, that one of them said could lead to a national accord being signed as early as next week.

But only hours before Rice landed in Israel, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused the United States and Israel of pushing his people toward civil war.

Haniyeh, whose Hamas movement is engaged in a deadly power struggle with Abbas’ Fatah party, made the claim as he called on the two sides to halt the feuding that has claimed more than 30 lives in the past month.

“The American and Israeli policies seek to push the Palestinian people toward civil war and internal conflict so that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict,” he said in a televised address from his office in Gaza City.

The fighting erupted last month after Abbas, frustrated by months of failure to agree a unity government acceptable to Western donors, announced that he would call early parliamentary and presidential elections.

Haniyeh accused the United States and Israel of pursuing a strategy toward the Palestinians, of which the main pillar is “not to allow the formation of a Palestinian national unity government” capable of ending the crippling Western aid freeze imposed after his administration took power in March.

The policy, which he said has “never stopped,” also aims to “reinforce and consolidate (Israeli) occupation and settlements” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Haniyeh said it was a “legitimate national and religious duty” to continue pushing for the formation of a coalition government.

“I call for the resumption of the national dialogue inside and abroad to form a national unity government on the basis of the national conciliation document.” That was a reference to a proposal made by a group of prominent Palestinian fighters held in Israeli jails.

— With input from agencies