Gaza crisis brings Hamas, Fatah truce

A Palestinian woman is helped by a paramedic out of her building, damaged during an Israeli air raid on a nearby sporting centre in Gaza City yesterday. Inset, Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian protester during clashes in the West Bank town of Nablus as Palestinian across the territories protest against Israel's military action on the Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP

Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas yesterday said they have decided to end infighting in a show of solidarity in the West Bank over the Gaza crisis, an AFP reporter said.
"From here, we announce with other (factional) leaders, that we are ending the division," senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub told a crowd of about 1,000 who gathered for a demonstration in Ramallah, the West Bank's political capital.
Among those present at the rally were top members of Hamas's leadership in the West Bank as well as senior officials from its smaller rival Islamic Jihad, the AFP correspondent said. "Whoever speaks about the division after today is a criminal," top Hamas leader Mahmud al-Ramahi told the crowd.
Fatah and Hamas, the two main Palestinian national factions, have been locked in a bitter dispute for years.
But the ongoing bloodshed in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, where Israel was yesterday pressing a sixth day of a major aerial campaign which has so far killed 96 Palestinians, appears to have prompted a rethink of traditional rivalries.
Meanwhile, More than 44 million hacking attempts have been made on Israeli government web sites since Wednesday , the government said on Sunday.