A struggle between the governing Hamas group and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah for control of Palestinian security forces intensified on Thursday with the appointment to a senior post of a top militant wanted by Israel.
Interior Minister Saeed Seyam of Hamas said he had named Jamal Abu Samhadana, commander of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and a senior Fatah leader, to be supervisor of the Interior Ministry, the government agency that oversees security services.
The appointment was widely seen as an attempt by Hamas to strengthen its grip on the ministry, especially after Abbas recently appointed one of his loyalists, Rashid Abu Shbak, as its director-general.
While Samhadana is from Fatah, he is Hamas's choice, has strong ties to Hamas and his appointment is in defiance of Abbas's earlier appointment.
Senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir said the appointment of Samhadana, whose group has spearheaded rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel, was like "letting a fox guard a henhouse."
The move could widen Abbas's rift with Hamas, which crushed his long-dominant Fatah faction in a January parliamentary election and rejected his calls to pursue peace with Israel.
However Samhadana is popular among several Palestinian factions and could be a unifying factor in confronting lawlessness and chaos in the territory, political sources said.
Addressing a meeting of local religious leaders, Seyam said his ministry would soon begin to recruit fighters from all Palestinian movements for a "special executive" force to deal with ordinary crime and clan rivalries in Gaza.
Samhadana has survived several attempts by Israel to kill him and is widely believed to be high on its most-wanted list of militants.
