Ma'an – Palestinian security forces are locked in a standoff with armed Palestinian resistance fighters in Ein Beit El-Ma refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus on Sunday.The military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, announced Sunday that it would react "fiercely" if Palestinian security forces arrest any of its activists ahead of a peace conference in the United States this month. Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party began a siege in the camp in an attempt to detain four PFLP fighters and one Fatah member accused of illegally firing their weapons.
Palestinian officials said that consultations are ongoing among Palestinian, American, and Israeli authorities in order to decide the fate of the PFLP fighters engaged in a standoff with PA forces in Ein Beit El-Ma camp. Abbas, like President Yasser Arafat before him, has come under intense Israeli and American pressure to show that he can establish security in the Palestinian territories and dismantle armed resistance groups in advance of a new round of negotiations aimed at establishing an independent Palestinian state. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, along with other armed groups, have rejected calls by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority to disband before Israel relinquishes control of occupied Palestinian lands.
The US-backed peace conference is scheduled to begin in the city of Annapolis during the last week of November. The PFLP, a marxist, pan-Arabist revolutionary group was, until the rise of Hamas, the second-largest Palestinian faction after Fatah. The group holds three seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council.