The de-facto prime minister of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniyeh, alleged Monday that his security forces had unveiled a spy network in the Gaza Strip that served Israel through the Ramallah- based administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"In recent arrests, the security services were able to dismantle several security cells that chanelled dangerous but false information to Ramallah and then to the Israeli occupation," Haniyeh told reporters in Gaza.
Haniyeh added that most of the network's members were Palestinian Authority employees on the pay list of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's West Bank government.
He vowed that his de-facto government would continue its crackdown of supporters of Abbas' Fatah party in Gaza, charging those arrested so far were in fact collaborators with Israel, rather than Fatah men.
In June 2007, Hamas routed pro-Abbas forces and seized sole control of Gaza, leaving the Palestinian president in control on the ground of the West Bank only.
Since then, the rival Palestinian camps have accused each other ofarbitrary arrests of each other's supporters in the territories under
their control.
Last week, aides to Abbas said his security forces had arrested a Hamas cell in the West Bank which allegedly plotted to assassinate senior officials in his administration.
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