NABLUS, West Bank, 22 September 2007 — Israeli special forces yesterday arrested a local Hamas commander in a West Bank refugee camp where the army concluded a four-day operation, sources on both sides said.

The Islamist movement said Israeli troops arrested Nihad Shkirat, 35, a senior official for the northern Nablus region.

A military official described him as the Hamas military commander in the Ein Beit Elma refugee camp and said he was connected to a local cell that was plotting an imminent attack in Israel. He was detained at dawn by special forces disguised as Palestinians, the official added.

The army said troops arrested 50 suspects in Ein Beit Elma during four days of operations that wound up yesterday.

It previously announced the arrest of three Hamas operatives who the army said confessed to intending to carry out “terror attacks.”

Two Palestinians and an Israeli soldier were killed in Ein Beit Elma since the army rolled in to prevent a “terrorist attack” which it claimed was being planned by Hamas and the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Meanwhile, medics said yesterday that the number of Palestinians killed during an Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip refugee camp rose to four after a Hamas fighter was shot dead during the incursion. Imad Abu Hjeir, 35, was killed in a gunfight with Israeli soldiers in Bureij late Thursday before the operation ended, medics said. Three other Palestinians were killed earlier the same day, including a 16-year-old boy run over by a bulldozer.

In another development, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepted the resignations of Fatah leaders he appointed to reorganize his party in the Gaza Strip after June’s Hamas takeover, an Abbas aide said yesterday.

But the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, played down suggestions the resignations of eight of the 10 members of the committee Abbas set up showed divisions within Fatah, notably over the payment of salaries from the West Bank, and the problems the once dominant faction faces in the Gaza Strip.

The resignations were not in writing, he noted, and he expected them to return.

“They told Abu Mazen they wished to resign and Abu Mazen told them ‘if you want to resign then so be it,’” the aide said, employing Abbas’ widely used familiar form of address. Abbas appointed the 10-member Fatah committee, under chairman Zakaria Al-Agha, to represent the faction in Gaza and reorganize its members after the rout of its forces in June.

A senior Fatah official said eight members of the committee, including Al-Agha, submitted their resignations to Abbas earlier this week to protest at the failure of Abbas’ new government in the occupied West Bank to pay salaries to more than 10,000 members of Fatah-dominated security forces in the Gaza Strip.

After the Gaza takeover, Abbas dismissed a unity government led by Hamas and established a new administration in the West Bank headed by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Israel and major Western powers, which had boycotted the previous, Hamas-led unity government, responded by restoring the flow of funds to Fayyad’s administration, allowing him to start paying salaries to most government workers.

Fayyad’s Cabinet has not offered an explanation as to why the 10,000 Fatah men have not received their salaries. Some officials have suggested that their salaries were being withheld because they failed to defend their compounds against Hamas during the June fighting.

The Abbas aide said yesterday that 3,600 of the 10,000 Fatah officials had now started receiving salaries.

After Hamas’ takeover, about 31,500 workers were dropped from the Palestinian Authority’s payroll, including 23,500 security personnel, according to figures provided to the International Monetary Fund.

Tensions between Hamas and Fatah have increased sharply in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks following a series of protests and mysterious explosions which Hamas blamed on Fatah loyalists.

Meanwhile, a prominent Hamas official tried to open discussions with Israel to ease confrontation in the Gaza Strip but was rebuffed, a Palestinian official familiar with the situation told Reuters yesterday. Though it was officially denied by Hamas, and Israel said its senior officials had had no contact, it appeared to be a first attempt by the movement to establish relations with the Jewish state since it seized control of the coastal enclave in June.

Public broadcaster Israel Radio said Israel rejected an approach from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, through a “mediator,” to a senior Israeli defense official before the Israeli security Cabinet declared Gaza an “enemy entity” on Wednesday. The Palestinian source told Reuters Hamas sought talks with Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, offering to rein in rocket fire into Israel in return for an easing of border controls. Haniyeh, Palestinian prime minister until he was dismissed by Abbas following June’s factional warfare in Gaza, has said before that Hamas would discuss practical measures with Israel to ease trade and traffic across Gaza’s borders.

— With input from agencies