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| By Associated Press October 28, 2006 |
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Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas hopes to beef up his loyalist forces with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) troops stationed in Jordan, Palestinian officials said, as rival factions bolstered their ranks in anticipation of a feared civil war.
Israel has objected in the past to letting members of the Jordan-based Badr Brigade enter Palestinian areas. But with clashes intensifying between Abbas' Fatah Party and forces loyal to the Palestinians' militantly anti-Israel Hamas government, Israeli officials said they would consider allowing them in, the Palestinian officials said.
Israeli authorities weren't immediately available for comment.
Palestinian officials did not say how many Badr forces Abbas hopes to mobilize. What is most important to him is that he would command their loyalty as head of the PLO.
Abbas, elected separately last year, is nominally the supreme commander of all seven Palestinian security branches, and most security personnel were hired by Fatah, which controlled the Palestinian Authority for more than a decade. But after Hamas swept Fatah out of office in January elections, it set up a militia of its own, which now numbers 5,700 armed men, and has announced plans to recruit an additional 1,500 forces in the West Bank, Fatah's stronghold.
The rival security forces have clashed frequently in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks as political tensions between the two sides grow. The violence has left more than a dozen dead and stoked fears of a bloody showdown.
The threat of heightened unrest led Palestinian officials from both sides to increase police presence on Saturday.
In Gaza, police in blue-and-white camouflage uniforms deployed around the parliament building, and in the West Bank town of Ramallah, security personnel were posted outside parliament, the Prime Minister's office and the Education Ministry.
In an attempt to ease tensions, a coordinating committee for all Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, met on Friday night in Gaza, and agreed to remove all their non-uniformed gunmen from the streets.
The confrontations have heated up amid Abbas' efforts to ease crippling international sanctions by persuading Hamas to moderate its anti-Israel stance and ally with Fatah in a coalition government.
The EU, U.S. and other donors cut off hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Palestinian Authority after Hamas took power in March. Despite growing hardship in the Palestinian areas, Hamas has rejected international calls to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.
Abbas plans to dissolve the Hamas-led government within two weeks if the Islamic militant group doesn't agree to form a coalition with Fatah, Palestinian officials said Friday.
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