The Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas deployed a new militia in the streets of the West Bank town of Jenin on Saturday in a show of force against the Hamas government. The new unit, which Fatah officials said numbers 2,500 members, is the movement's answer to a new militia of 3,000 Hamas activists that the government deployed last month over Abbas' objection. The presence of a new Fatah militia, on top of the official security branches that the movement dominates, ratchets up tensions between Fatah and Hamas that have already erupted in deadly violence and raised the specter of all-out civil war. Hamas spokesmen weren't immediately available for comment. More than 2,000 members of the new unit gathered in Jenin on Saturday morning wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with "Special Protection Unit" on the back, and a photo of the late Yasser Arafat on the front. Some 60 to 70 were armed with assault rifles, and several dozens carried pistols.
A Fatah leader in Jenin, Ata Abu Rmeileh, said the aim of the force was to back the official Palestinian security branches. "You are here to protect your people and the Palestinian Authority institutions," Abu Rmeileh exhorted the force over a loudspeaker at the local high school where it gathered. "We are loyal to our people, not like those who have sold themselves to Arab and non-Arab capitals," he said, in a thinly veiled reference to Hamas, which is supported by Syria and Iran.