The rival Palestinian leaderships of the West Bank and Gaza appeared to be taking practical steps on Wednesday toward ending their schism, in a rare response to public pressure for national unity after years of deep division.
The new talk of unity came as Israel displayed weaponry it seized after intercepting a merchant ship on Tuesday. Israeli leaders said the weapons, including six advanced antiship missiles, originated in Iran, were loaded aboard the ship in Syria and were bound for Gaza.
President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, said Wednesday that he was ready to go to Gaza and meet with Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Hamas government, who on Tuesday had invited Mr. Abbas and Fatah to resume unity talks. Mr. Abbas said the purpose would be to reach agreement on the formation of a new government that could prepare for Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections within six months.
Mr. Haniya issued a statement saying that he had started discussions with other Hamas leaders and aides to arrange to receive Mr. Abbas. It would be Mr. Abbas’s first visit to Gaza since Hamas, the Islamic militant group, took control of Gaza in June 2007.
The initiative came a day after demonstrations in Gaza and the West Bank, organized by independent Palestinian youths calling for national reconciliation. Despite the political outreach by Mr. Haniya, Hamas security forces violently dispersed Tuesday’s mass rally in Gaza and repressed attempts to hold more protests on Wednesday.
Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have been wary of allowing popular demonstrations to take place, given the upheavals in the region and the risk that public frustration will turn against them. So the quick response by the two leaderships to popular demands was a rare convergence of interest.
Still, the sides seemed to have different agendas for a meeting. Mr. Abbas said he was going to Gaza only to form the new government, not to engage in a national dialogue. An aide clarified that the government would be made up of “neutral national leaders,” according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas official, said in a telephone interview that the agenda of the visit should be “discussed when the factions meet at the negotiations table, not before.”
The political split between the West Bank and Gaza, which are physically separated by Israeli territory, has been growing since Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006. Then came a year and a half of uneasy power sharing and factional fighting in Gaza, which ended when Hamas routed Fatah forces and took over there. Mr. Abbas’s authority has since been limited to the West Bank.
Last month, Mr. Abbas called for elections by September, but after Hamas rejected the idea he said it would be “unacceptable to hold elections in the West Bank without Gaza.”
Also on Wednesday, Israel’s prime minister, defense minister, army chief of staff and navy commander were in the Israeli port of Ashdod to survey the seized weapons from the merchant ship, which was flying a Liberian flag. Israeli naval forces commandeered the vessel as it was en route from Turkey to the Egyptian port of Alexandria, and escorted it to Ashdod.
The Israeli military said that had the antiship missiles reached Gaza, they would have constituted a significant upgrade in the weapons capabilities of the organizations operating there. It did not mention Hamas by name. Several militant groups operate out of Gaza, including Islamic Jihad.
At a news conference in Ashdod, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said of the weapons: “They originate in Iran. They passed through Syria and were en route to terrorists in the Gaza Strip. But, as has been said, their final objective was Israeli citizens.”
The seized weapons included two radar systems and two launchers, thousands of mortar shells and about 70,000 rounds for Kalashnikov rifles. Israel also displayed what it said were manuals in Persian found on board, detailing the specifications of the missiles.
Early Wednesday, two Hamas militants were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a Hamas training camp near Gaza City. The Israeli military said the strike was in response to that morning’s firing of a projectile from Gaza into southern Israel.
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