GENEVA/GAZA CITY, 30 June 2007 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday called on Socialist leaders gathered in Geneva to support his attempts to isolate the Hamas movement, which has taken control of the Gaza Strip.

Abbas told the 400 delegates of the Socialist International that he was “determined to isolate the (Hamas) coup d’etat, delegitimize all militias, and enforce law and order over all parts of the Palestinian territory.”

He denounced the “bloody Hamas coup d’etat...which was accompanied by a series of crimes, murders and aggression against everything Palestinians stand for.” He also warned that “there are those in our region who support those who staged the coup d’etat with the objective of hindering any progress in our region toward balanced and genuine solutions to our problems.”

“I am confident in your continued support in all spheres, in order to defeat the objectives of the putschists,” Abbas said.

The beleaguered Palestinian president, who heads the Fatah movement, was greeted with a standing ovation by delegates, and went on to call for talks with Israel.

“I renew my message to the Israeli people, our hands are extended to you in order to achieve a just and comprehensive peace,” he said.

The biannual council of the Socialist International is being attended by other key figures from the Middle East, including Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani, Lebanon’s Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and the head of Iraqi Kurdistan’s autonomous government Masoud Barzani.

In another development, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian fighter from Abbas’ Fatah movement yesterday on the second day of a large-scale military raid targeting armed loyalists of the Western-backed leader.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has accused Israel of trying to undermine Abbas’ emergency Cabinet by conducting the raid despite the Palestinian leader’s vows to take his own steps to disarm gunmen.

Officials of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of Fatah said the 28-year-old fighter belonged to their group, and that Israeli soldiers shot him as he fled arrest.

Meanwhile, Abbas sacked a senior officer in the National Security Force yesterday. Col. Hussein Awad Odeh becomes the latest casualty of Fatah’s military defeat to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, after the recent dismissals of the strip’s Presidential Guard commander and other Fatah commanders.

The presidential decree said that Odeh had not fulfilled his tasks properly to defend PA premises in the face of Hamas militias.

Meanwhile, Israel and the Palestinian Authority are discussing implementing a clause from a 2005 understanding whereby Israel would stop pursuing Palestinian suspects in the West Bank if they forswear violence, said Israeli officials.

The officials’ comments came as Israel went after Fatah gunmen in the West Bank city of Nablus.

“Even though Israel was making gestures to Abbas and his Fatah movement, it would continue to pursue those actively involved in violence, regardless of their organizational affiliation,” the officials said.

Ismail Haniyeh, who still considers himself as head of a unity government Abbas has sacked, condemned Israel’s raid in the West Bank and another in Gaza in which 12 Palestinians were killed on Wednesday.

Speaking as he left a mosque in Gaza City yesterday, Haniyeh urged Abbas to renew contacts with Hamas, saying “the Palestinian political system cannot live without” the Islamist movement.

Meanwhile, Israel’s disgraced President Moshe Katsav resigned yesterday after signing a controversial plea bargain that will see him convicted of sexual offenses but escape jail for initial rape charges.

The father of five, who suspended himself from duty in January over the worst scandal to befall an Israeli leader, sent a letter of resignation by courier to Parliament Speaker Dalia Itzik, a senior aide to Katsav told AFP.

His resignation will take effect in 48 hours, when Itzik will be named interim president and the state prosecution will indict Katsav.

— With input from agencies