RAMALLAH, 4 August 2007 — Representatives from the Hamas movement, Fatah, and other Palestinian factions held talks in order to end the division among the Palestinians after Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza Strip last June, a Hamas official revealed yesterday.

The official, who spoke with the Palestinian Ma’an news agency on condition of anonymity, said that they arranged to establish a national unity government of independent figures, to last for nine months to one year and a half.

The security services will be restructured, and the security HQ will be turned over to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Among those who participated in the talks were Ghazi Hamad of Hamas, the spokesman of dismissed Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and Jibril Rajoub of Fatah, former national security adviser to Abbas, in addition to former minister of education, Nasser Al-Shaer of Hamas.

The official added that the conveners discussed the presidential decrees which were issued by Abbas following the violent takeover of the Gaza Strip part of which was the dismissal of Hamas-led government and the outlawing of its security apparatus the “Executive Force.”

The suggested proposal is to entrust Palestinian national committees to take care of the security headquarters, due to the absence of security service members in the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, only two security services will be formed, the police and the national security, as the Palestinian arena “does not need several security services with over 80,000 members.” The Executive Force may also be assimilated into the police service, in order to avoid having any security service with a factional affiliation. It was agreed that the Palestinian National Security Council will be activated, “according to the right standards.” As part of the initiative, Hamas will recognize Abbas’ leadership “as part of the Palestinian legitimacy but not all of it.”

In another development, the commander of the Islamic Jihad in Nablus, Raid Abu Al-Adas was killed early yesterday by Israeli forces operating in the West Bank city. Palestinian sources said the soldiers encircled a building in which the 34-year-old Al-Adas was hiding with another Jihad member. The Israeli troops then burst into the building and killed the commander.

The second Jihad member was wounded from the gunfire of Israeli soldiers and then apprehended.

The Israeli Army said the soldiers called on the wanted Palestinians to turn themselves in before opening fire at the Jihad commander as he was attempting to escape through a window. It was also reported that a rifle and pistol were later found during a search of the structure.

Also yesterday, Israeli infantry and armor moved in to southern Gaza, occupying the former Rafah international airport and neighboring houses, witnesses said. Three Palestinians were wounded in exchanges of fire, one of them seriously, and 10 others were held for questioning. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the incursion, calling it a “routine operation” against armed Palestinian groups in the area.

In another incident, fighters fired three rockets from Gaza into southern Israel early yesterday, slightly wounding a civilian and causing minor damage to property, a military source said.

Two of the rockets hit the town of Sderot and the third struck a stable in a kibbutz.

For six years, southern Israel has been the target of deadly, though usually inaccurate, homemade rockets fired by Palestinian fighters. Nine people have been killed and dozens wounded, mostly in and around Sderot.

Frustration with the Israeli military’s failure to put a stop to the firing led a group calling itself the Sderot Support Committee to mount a novel protest on Thursday. Using an improvised launcher, they fired tomatoes, eggs, cucumbers, mangoes and even corn on the cob at the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun before the army put a stop to their actions.

“Since the government has done nothing (to stop the attacks), we decided to take things into our own hands,” Yigal Tzur, who heads the committee, told the Maariv daily newspaper. Tzur was wrong when he said the government had done nothing to stop the rocket fire, although it is true that all its efforts have so far failed.

Scores of Palestinians have been killed in retaliatory air and artillery strikes, and occasional infantry incursions, since the rocket fire first began.

The violence came after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday ended a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories aimed at reviving the dormant peace process between the two sides.

Rice ended a regional tour aimed at building on diplomatic momentum since Hamas’ seizure of Gaza, and to lay the groundwork for an international peace conference called by US President George W. Bush for later this year.

During her talks with Abbas, she told him Israel was ready to discuss “fundamental issues” to advance stalled peace efforts.

— With input from agencies