Hamas rallies in Gaza pose new challenge to Abbas

NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip -- Thousands of masked Hamas gunmen marched in formation through abandoned Jewish settlements Friday, firing in the air and trampling an Israeli flag in the Islamic militant group's largest military-style victory parade since the Gaza withdrawal.

The show of force -- and the Palestinian Authority's persistent failure to stop people from crossing Gaza's border into Egypt -- underscored Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' trouble asserting control. Abbas pledged Friday to seal the chaotic frontier in "two or three days," but previous deadlines passed without change.

With elections approaching in January, Hamas and Abbas' Fatah faction are locked in an increasingly bitter power struggle. Each is trying to use Israel's Gaza pullout for political gain.

Abbas is under heavy international pressure to disarm militants, a call reiterated by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a speech Thursday to the United Nations.

Hamas rejects Abbas' pleas to disarm, saying its attacks drove Israel from Gaza and that armed resistance will continue. One Hamas commander, Fathi Hamad, said the Islamic militant group will actually build up its arms. "We will increase our production capacity and the purchase of weapons," he said.

Fatah and Hamas have held competing victory celebrations since Israel completed its pullout Monday, and Hamas has had far bigger turnouts.

Some 10,000 people joined Friday's rally in the ruins of Neve Dekalim, which weeks ago was Gaza's largest Jewish settlement. People waved green Hamas flags, held posters of Hamas' founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was killed in an Israeli missile strike last year, and burned plastic foam models of settlements.

Standing in columns and wearing camouflage, the Hamas gunmen resembled a private army. Militants fired machine guns into the air, and Hamas vehicles displaying homemade rockets and grenade launchers on their roofs drove over an Israeli flag.

Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader, mocked the Israeli premier's latest call for Abbas to crack down. "We tell Sharon: 'Fool, you are asking the Palestinian Authority to do something you have failed to do with all your might,"' he said.

A delegation from Egypt's doctors' union, a group linked with the banned Muslim Brotherhood, joined the celebration, as did Magdy Hussein, a leader of another banned Islamic group, the Egyptian Labor Party.

Earlier Friday, hundreds of masked Hamas gunmen in military-style fatigues paraded through the abandoned settlement of Netzarim.

Ziad Abu Amr, a Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza who frequently mediates between Hamas and Fatah, said he believes the Hamas threat is exaggerated. He said the militant rallies are celebrations and not meant to defy Abbas.

But Shaker Shabat, a professor at the Al Quds Open University in Gaza, said Hamas is sending two clear messages. "The first one addressed to the Palestinian people is that Hamas is the largest military power in Gaza and it played the biggest role in kicking the occupation out," he said. "The second is to Abu Mazen that you have to think twice before trying to disarm Hamas."

Abbas, widely known as Abu Mazen, traveled Friday to the southern town of Rafah and promised after talks with senior Egyptian officials there to seal the border within two or three days. The Palestinians acknowledge that hundreds of assault rifles have flooded Gaza in recent days, confirming Israeli fears about giving up border control.

Abbas was joined by top security commanders and, in an unusual move, by leaders of the militant group Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. Abbas in the past has said he wants to disarm the group and fold its members into the Palestinian police. But Friday's meeting signaled he may deal with the group, which is responsible for dozens of attacks against Israelis, as a separate entity.

"Everybody wants to work and stand shoulder to shoulder for the sake of ending the image of chaos," Abbas said, when asked about the presence of Al Aqsa gunmen.

Palestinian officials said early Friday that the border was quieting down. But late in the day, thousands of people overwhelmed Palestinian and Egyptian forces and crossed the border again.

Still, Egyptian and Palestinian police succeeded in limiting Gazans to crossing at only two ruptures in the Egyptian fence on Friday instead of the multiple ones Palestinians have been using. Egyptian police laid down new barbed wire and closed some of the openings with large stones.

Under an agreement with Israel, Egypt has started deploying 750 troops to secure its side of the frontier and prevent weapons smuggling.

But the agreement puts Cairo in a tough spot. The last thing Egypt wants is to replace Israel as Gaza's jailer in the eyes of the Palestinians and the Arab world. So now Egypt is stuck between its promises to keep security at the border and its reluctance to clamp down on the thousands of Palestinians joyfully bounding over the walls Israel erected.

Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said he expects Egypt to secure the border in the "coming days."

"If not, we will have to act," he told Israel TV. He did not elaborate.