U.S.-backed Fatah training Hamas forces

JERUSALEM – Militia members on the payroll of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization have been training Hamas police units in the Gaza Strip, WND has learned.

The information comes shortly after the U.S. announced large sums of aid to Fatah and initiated military training programs for West Bank Fatah militias purportedly to back Abbas' group against Hamas and to isolate Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Hamas recently initiated a training program for the terror group's newly formed street police forces in the Gaza Strip. Last week, Hamas' Al Aqsa television broadcast footage of the new program's first graduating class of about 90 policemen. According to Hamas leaders, hundreds more policemen are being trained.

Top sources in Hamas' so-called military wing told WND the police program is being run in part by a "handful" of Fatah officers who still receive salaries from Fatah and who are still publicly identified as Fatah members. The Fatah members are training Hamas police forces quietly, the Hamas sources said.

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The sources said the police trainers also consist of "dozens" of former Fatah security officers who switched over to Hamas after the terror group took over the Gaza Strip and seized U.S.-backed Fatah security compounds in June. Those trainers now openly work for Hamas.

Hamas' police chief in Gaza, Tawfiq Jaber, is Fatah's former police chief in the territory.

Thousands of Fatah militia members, including police forces, received American training the past few years in the West Bank city of Jericho, where the U.S. still runs training programs for Fatah units.

Since Hamas sized power in Gaza it has reportedly worked to quickly establish military and police units. Hamas officials say their terror group now has an active military of 20,000 armed men; a naval unit established last month; and the new police forces.

While Hamas and Fatah have engaged in numerous deadly clashes in Gaza, there have been indications the two are seeking a reconciliation.

Last month, WND broke the story Hamas and Fatah in the West Bank formed a new terror group, called the Fire Belt, to conduct joint operations against the Jewish state.

The Fire Belt took credit for a series of shootings against Israeli soldiers operating in the northern West Bank and for a grenade attack this past weekend at an Israeli jeep in the West Bank city of Nablus.

The London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat last month reported the Hamas leadership is considering an initiative proposing it hand back Gaza Strip security compounds seized from Fatah in June to achieve reconciliation with Abbas' group.

Also, the Iranian Fars news agency recently quoted Palestinian diplomatic sources stating Abbas appointed two senior Fatah officials to hold informal talks with Hamas to affect a reconciliation with the group. Fatah denied the report, but Ahmed Yousef, a top political adviser to Hamas' Gaza leader and deposed prime minister Ismail Haniya, said Abbas indeed allowed some Fatah officials to hold unofficial talks with Hamas.

In a move that raised diplomatic eyebrows in Washington and Jerusalem, Fatah earlier this month paid the salaries of almost half the members of rival Hamas' security forces. PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad at first claimed the salaries where transferred in error and assured a delegation of visiting House of Representatives members that Fatah had no financial dealings with Hamas. Later, a PA investigation chartered by Fayyad claimed a bribed PA Finance Ministry official was responsible for the salary transfer to Hamas.

The U.S. recently announced large sums of aid to Fatah and initiated military training programs for West Bank Fatah militias purportedly to back Abbas' group against Hamas and to isolate Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

The State Department last month announced a multimillion dollar program to train Fatah militants in the West Bank. Under an agreement signed this month by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Fayyad, Fatah's Force 17 officers are slated to take course work and conduct VIP protection exercises under the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Force 17 serve as de facto police units in the West Bank. Many members of Force 17 openly serve in the Brigades.

The Fatah training program, which includes courses in the use of weapons, is part of a larger $86.5 million aid package granted to the PA by Congress in April.

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