Region

ISTANBUL — Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday compared his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu to the Islamist militants who killed 17 people in Paris last week, saying both had committed crimes against humanity.

He also accused a secular Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet of "incitement" for publishing excerpts from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the first target in the Paris attacks.

Within hours, a prosecutor opened an investigation into the Turkish daily.

Davutoglu said Israel's bombardments of Gaza and its storming in 2010 of a Turkish-led aid convoy heading there, in which 10 Turks were killed, were on a par with the Paris attacks, whose dead included shoppers at a Jewish supermarket.

The comments at a news conference escalated a war of words between the former allies: Israel's far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an "anti-Semitic bully" on Wednesday for criticising Netanyahu's attendance, with other world leaders, at a Paris solidarity march for the attack victims on Sunday.

Erdogan's spokesman issued a statement accusing Netanyahu of Islamophobia to link the bloodshed in France to Islam.

"The Israeli government must halt its aggressive and racist policies instead of attacking others and sheltering behind anti-Semitism," spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on the presidential website.

Turkey condemned the January 7 attack on Charlie Hebdo, in which Islamist gunmen killed 12 people, but has also warned rising Islamophobia in Europe risks inflaming unrest by Muslims.

Davutoglu also attended the Paris memorial rally, which he said was a march against terrorism.

"Just as the massacre in Paris committed by terrorists is a crime against humanity, Netanyahu, as the head of the government that kills children playing on the beach with the bombardment of Gaza, destroys thousands of homes... and that massacred our citizens on an aid ship in international waters, has committed crimes against humanity," the Turkish premier said.

Ruptured relations

Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem, called for an international condemnation of Erdogan and Davutoglu's remarks.

"I have not heard condemnation from the international community to these unacceptable words. I want to say clearly that if the international community does not condemn those who support terror and do not stand strongly and clearly against those who fight it, the wave of terror that is sweeping the world will only increase," Netanyahu said.

The assault on the aid convoy ruptured relations between Turkey and Israel, which previously enjoyed close diplomatic and military ties. They remain major trading partners.

Israel fought a 50-day war with the Islamist Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip last year, killing more than 2,100 Palestinians, mostly civilians, Gaza medical officials said. The Israeli death toll was 73, mostly soldiers.

"If Israel is looking for a bully, it needs to look in the mirror," said Davutoglu, whose Islamist-rooted AK Party has held power in Turkey for more than a decade.

Criticising Cumhuriyet, he said freedom of the press did not extend to insulting religious values, a crime punishable by jail in Turkey.

Cumhuriyet published one of five international versions of the "survivors' edition" of Charlie Hebdo. The original bore an image of Prophet Mohammad on its cover, which is prohibited by Islamic convention.

United Nations — The United Nations on Thursday called on Israel to unlock millions of dollars in taxes owed to the Palestinian Authority that were withheld after it decided to join the International Criminal Court.

A senior UN official told the UN Security Council that the freeze of about $127 million imposed on January 3 was in violation of the Oslo peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

"We call on Israel to immediately resume the transfer of tax revenues," said UN Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen.

The United States and the European Union have criticised Israel's retaliatory move in response to the Palestinian application to join the ICC, which could investigate war crimes complaints against Israel.

The 15-member council was meeting to discuss the Middle East after rejecting in a vote last month a resolution on Palestinian statehood that had been strongly opposed by the United States.

The UN official told the council that recent developments had further reduced prospects for reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The Palestinians and Israel are "now engaged in a downward spiral of actions and counter-actions", warned Toyberg-Frandzen.

The council was meeting as Arab foreign ministers gathered in Cairo decided to make another attempt to win approval for a UN resolution on ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

Several Arab countries were tasked with what the Arab league described as "the necessary communications and consultations to submit a new Arab proposal to the Security Council".

The failed Arab-backed resolution set the end of 2017 as the deadline for a full Israeli withdrawal that would pave the way to Palestinian statehood.

The United States and Australia voted against but China, France and Russia were among eight countries that backed the resolution, leaving it just one vote short of the nine required for adoption.

The outcome spared the United States from resorting to its veto, a move that could have undermined its standing in the Arab world at a time when Washington is leading a campaign against Islamists in Iraq and Syria.

Five countries seen as having a more pro-Palestinian stance began their term at the Security Council this month — Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and Venezuela.

TEHRAN — Iranian reformists held their first public meeting since June 2009 on Thursday to press their political comeback and wrest back control of the conservative-dominated parliament in next year's polls.

The conservative establishment had cracked down hard on reformists following the disputed June 2009 re-election of hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Reformists contested the vote and many of their leaders were arrested and jailed, including two presidential candidates and opposition leaders Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi who have been under house arrest since 2011.

The following year most of the reformists boycotted the polls in protest against the arrests.

The 2013 election victory of moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who pledged greater political and cultural openness, marked the return of reformists to mainstream politics.

Former moderate president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and his successor Mohammad Khatami, a reformist, helped Rouhani to secure victory by obtaining the withdrawal of reformist candidate Mohammad Reza Aref.

Thursday's meeting was organised by the council for coordinating the reformist front, a coalition of some 20 parties, and brought together about 200 delegates to chart the movement's future course of action.

"Our objective must be to wrest the majority in parliament. We have no other choice. We must set aside differences that threaten to weaken us," Aref told the gathering.

Rafsanjani and Khatami did not attend the meeting, instead sending messages of support calling on moderate parties and reformist groups to close ranks ahead of the March 2016 legislative polls.

"I salute the meeting of reformist and moderate parties... who are the true heirs of the thought of imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini," Rafsanjani said in his message, in reference to the late founder of the Islamic republic.

He urged delegates to defend "the rights of the nation, including those of the various ethnic and religious [groups] and of women" and stressed the "will and choice of the people must be respected".

Khatami's message also stressed the need "for unity of all those who claim they belong to the reformist movement and who accept the principles of the regime of the Islamic republic".

Aref hailed Khatami as "the leader of the reformist movement" and also voiced regret that nearly four years later main opposition leaders Mousavi and Karoubi are still under house arrest.

Rouhani's administration favours freeing the two opposition leaders, but the executive branch is unable to take such a decision, according to several government members.

GAZA — Escalating tension between Islamist group Hamas and its Western-backed rival Fateh has pushed their "unity" government to the brink of collapse, harming efforts to rebuild the Gaza Strip and complicating Palestinian statehood ambitions.

Five months after a devastating war with Israel, Gaza's residents are still occasionally jolted by explosions. But the blasts now are more often the result of the internal conflict tearing at the fabric of Palestinian politics.

Hamas, which seized Gaza in a brief civil war in 2007, remains the dominant force in the territory — even after it agreed last June to a "reconciliation government" that would assert control and oversee post-war reconstruction.

That government's inability to fully carry out its work has stalled rebuilding in Gaza, where around 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in the war, and undermined a Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations.

In recent weeks the Hamas-Fateh stand-off has spiralled into violence, although it is not always clear who is behind it. On Friday, bombs exploded at a major Gaza bank used by the unity government to pay most of the 70,000 public sector workers hired before Hamas took over the narrow, coastal enclave.

At the weekend, pictures emerged of Fateh activists in Gaza who said they had been stripped, beaten and left in freezing temperatures by Hamas security men. Hamas, meanwhile, accuses Fateh of rounding up its party members in the West Bank, where the Fateh-led Palestinian Authority (PA) prevails.

"Whenever Hamas is with its back against the wall, it reacts with some fighting," said Mattia Toaldo, a Middle East expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, although he described that as a worst-case scenario that remained unlikely for now.

Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, who is based in the West Bank, says his technocrat government cannot begin to administer Gaza until Hamas fully relinquishes control, including over border crossings with Egypt and Israel.

But there is no sign of that happening.

For its part, Hamas accuses Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fateh and controls the PA budget, of trying to throttle the group into submission, including by refusing to pay its 50,000 public-sector employees.

"Abbas must first show solidarity with his own people, whom he deprives of salaries and rebuilding," said Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas official. The Islamist group has also lambasted Abbas for not visiting Gaza since the war with Israel.

Darkening outlook

The upshot is that the Palestinians are now as polarised as ever, with Hamas overseeing Gaza and its 1.8 million people, while Fateh is in charge in the West Bank, just 60km to the northeast, where 2.8 million live.

Foreign governments that last October contributed $5.4 billion to a fund for the Palestinians, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and others in Europe, have indicated that they cannot fully follow through on their commitments until the unity government is in charge as a single authority.

The risk for Hamas is that if it gives up power now it may not regain it — while it won the last Palestinian elections in 2006, there are no signs of a new vote being held.

For Fateh, if it does not exert itself via the Palestinian Authority, it cannot hope to be taken seriously by the rest of the world as it prepares to join the International Criminal Court and make another statehood attempt at the United Nations.

What is more, even if that bid makes progress, opinion polls show Hamas will win the next elections, whenever they are held, greatly complicating the statehood agenda.

Hamas is formally sworn to Israel's destruction and opposes the PA's independence strategy because it would not mean a state in all of historic Palestine and it believes critical issues, such as the right of return for refugees, are not included.

Hani Al Masri, an independent political analyst based in the West Bank, worries that if the Hamas-Fateh tensions are not reined in, the results could be devastating, especially for the people of Gaza, desperate to rebuild their lives after the war.

"It might lead to unrest and bring closer the moment of a potential explosion that neither Hamas nor anybody else could contain, and could even spread to the West Bank," he said.

GENEVA — Top diplomats from Iran and the United States met Wednesday for talks aimed at speeding up negotiations for a nuclear deal as a third deadline for a historic accord looms.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif huddled in an upscale Geneva hotel, ahead of full negotiations with global powers here on Sunday.

They are seeking to break a stalemate that has caused them to miss two previous deadlines for a full agreement to rein in Iran's suspect nuclear programme.

Zarif told reporters Wednesday's talks were "important".

"I think it will show the readiness of the two parties to move forward to speed up the process."

But asked if there would be a comprehensive deal by the new July 1 deadline, he remained cautious replying: "We'll see."

Past negotiations have stumbled reportedly over Iran's insistence that it retain the right to enrich some uranium — which can in some cases be used to make an atomic bomb — for what it says is a peaceful civilian nuclear programme.

There has also been disagreement over global sanctions, with Tehran calling for an end to an iron-fisted regime which has crippled Iran's economy, while the US has insisted on a temporary, gradual suspension.

Negotiators have been tight-lipped about their differences and Zarif would not go into detail when asked about the thorniest matters still clouding the talks.

"All issues are hard until we resolve them and all issues are easy if you resolve them," he told reporters travelling with Kerry.

Kerry has said the aim of his talks with Zarif on Wednesday is to "take stock" and provide guidance for their negotiating teams ahead of fresh discussions by global powers known as the P5+1 here on Sunday.

Clock ticking 

The top US diplomat, who was accompanied to Wednesday's talks by his chief negotiators Wendy Sherman and Bill Burns, also told reporters earlier this week that he hopes to "accelerate the process to make greater progress".

The two teams met for two hours Wednesday morning, broke for a short pause, and then resumed their negotiations.

Diplomats fear that time may be running out, after two earlier deadlines for a deal were missed.

The new Republican-controlled Congress is already considering a bill which would slap new sanctions on Iran despite attempts by the Obama administration to hold them off.

Washington's UN envoy Samantha Power said Monday that ratcheting up sanctions against Iran would likely torpedo the negotiations.

"Imposing new sanctions will almost certainly end a negotiations process that has not only frozen the advance of Iran's nuclear programme, but that could lead us to an understanding that would give us confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature," Power told a US think-tank.

"If we pull the trigger on new nuclear-related sanctions now, we will go from isolating Iran to isolating ourselves," she said.

But earlier Zarif told Iranian television that "we have arrived at the stage where the other party must take decisions so we can go forward”.

"New proposals must be put forward. We are ready to discuss all the issues, but we will have to see if the other side is ready," he said, repeating Iran's insistence that it is not seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Under an interim deal between world powers and Tehran in force since January 2014, Iran agreed to limit its uranium enrichment.

In return, Iran received limited relief from a network of global sanctions, obtaining about $7 billion (over 8 billion euros) from more than $100 billion in oil revenues frozen in bank accounts around the world.

But two deadlines for a comprehensive accord with the P5+1 group of nations — the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia plus Germany — have since been missed as they have tussled to nail down a complex, technical deal.

ON BOARD THE CHARLES DE GAULLE — France's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier is ready to be used to support military operations against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, French President Francois Hollande told military personnel aboard the vessel on Wednesday.

"Thanks to the Charles de Gaulle we will have precious intelligence," the president said in a New Year's address, given as the carrier cruised off France's southern coast in the Mediterranean.

"We may also conduct operations in Iraq, if necessary, with even more intensity and more efficiency. The aircraft carrier will work in close cooperation with coalition forces."

France was the first country to join the US-led coalition in air strikes in Iraq against IS insurgents, who have also taken control of large parts of neighbouring Syria during the course of the civil war there. However, it has ruled out striking the group in Syria.

It has about 800 military personnel, nine fighter jets, a maritime patrol aircraft and a refuelling plane at its base in the United Arab Emirates as part of its "Chammal" Iraq mission, as well as an anti-aircraft warship in the Gulf. It also operates six Mirage fighter jets from Jordan.

France also has more than 3,000 troops carrying out counter-insurgency operations against Al Qaeda-linked militants in the Sahel-Sahara region.

It has urged African nations to step up cross-border cooperation to tackle security challenges from Islamist groups in southern Libya to Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria as it seeks to scale back its military commitments on the continent.

Hollande reaffirmed that France would reduce the number of troops deployed in the Central African Republic, where it has handed control of peacekeeping operations to United Nations missions.

France had deployed 2,000 troops to curb Christian-Muslim violence in the country. This will fall to 800 by the autumn, he said on Wednesday.

A week after Islamist militants carried out a series of attacks in Paris, killing 17 people, Hollande said 10,500 military personnel would be deployed across France as of Wednesday evening to bolster domestic security.

The president added that the government needed to review the rate of cuts to French military personnel planned over the next three years to take account of security needs.

MOSCOW — Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday Syrian opposition representatives would risk losing influence in peace efforts if they do not attend planned talks in Moscow.

The refusal of prominent opposition figures to attend the January 26-29 meeting, intended to bring together representatives of President Bashar Assad and Syrian opposition groups, has dealt a blow to Russian efforts to seek solution to the Syrian conflict.

"Those who decide not to take part in this event, they will lose in terms of their positions in the peace talks process as a whole," Lavrov told a news conference.

Moscow, Assad's key ally, says it still hopes the Western-backed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces will be represented at the talks.

Some 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Syria, which started with street protests against Assad in March 2011, and then descended into a civil war. Radical Islamist groups have gained an upper hand in the insurgency.

In rejecting the invitation to Moscow, the Western-backed opposition Syrian National Coalition said on January 7 it would sit down to talks only if they would lead to Assad giving up power.

Moscow says the emphasis should instead be on fighting Islamist militants and that Assad's exit should not be a precondition to peace talks that stalled early last year.

US secretary of state John Kerry said in Geneva on Wednesday he hoped "that the Russian efforts could be helpful".

Moscow's renewed diplomatic push on Syria came as its ties with the West soured over another conflict — in Ukraine.

SANAA — Al Qaeda  in Yemen Wednesday claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, saying it was ordered by the jihadist network's global chief to avenge the French magazine's cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

In a video entitled "A message regarding the blessed battle of Paris", Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said that it had financed and plotted the assault on the weekly that left 12 people dead and shocked France.

But it said the orders had come from the very top of the global jihadist network — Ayman Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who succeeded Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden after his death in 2011.

"We, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the messenger of Allah," Nasser Al Ansi, one of AQAP's chiefs, said in the video.

The perpetrators of the attack, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, were known to have trained with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

AQAP was formed in January 2009 as a merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of Al Qaeda. Washington regards it as the network's most dangerous branch and has carried out a sustained drone war against its leaders.

"The leadership of [AQAP] was the party that chose the target and plotted and financed the plan... It was following orders by our general chief Ayman Al Zawahiri," Ansi said of the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

"The heroes were chosen and they answered the call," he said.

Speaking over footage of the assault, Ansi said: "Today, the mujahedeen avenge their revered prophet, and send the clearest message to everyone who would dare to attack Islamic sanctities."

Ansi referenced a warning by Bin Laden, who was killed by US commandos in Pakistan.

"If the freedom of your speech is not restrained, then you should accept the freedom of our actions," he said.

Charlie Hebdo had angered Muslims in the past by printing cartoons lampooning Mohammed and Islam.

The claim of responsibility coincided with the return of Charlie Hebdo to newsstands, amid unprecedented demand that saw the paper print five million copies.

The new issue features another cartoon of Mohammed on its cover, with tears in his eyes, holding a "Je Suis Charlie" sign under the headline "All is forgiven".

As well as the attack on the magazine, four Jews were killed when another militant stormed a kosher supermarket in Paris.

Ansi said the attack on Charlie Hebdo "coincided by the grace of Allah with the operation of brother Amedy Coulibaly", who attacked the Jewish shop.

Militants hail attacks  

Ansi indicated that planning for the attack on Charlie Hebdo had begun several years ago through Anwar Al Awlaki, the US-Yemeni cleric killed by a US drone strike in 2011.

Cherif Kouachi told French media before he was killed by police that a trip he made to Yemen the same year was financed by Awlaki.

AQAP has a record of launching attacks far from its base in Yemen, including a bid to blow up a US airliner over Michigan on Christmas Day in 2009.

The group recently called for its supporters to carry out attacks in France, which is part of a US-led coalition conducting air strikes against jihadists from the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

AQAP's English-language propaganda magazine "Inspire" has urged jihadists to wage "lone wolf" attacks abroad.

In 2013 it named Charlie Hebdo cartoonist and editor-in-chief Stephane Charbonnier, who was killed in the attack, among its list of targets.

Ansi noted in the video that the dead included "one listed among those wanted" in Inspire.

Nigerian extremist group Boko Haram also hailed the attacks.

"We are indeed happy with what happened in France," the group's leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video posted online.

"We are happy over what befell the people of France... as their blood was shed inside their country as they [try to] safeguard their blood," he said.

Leading Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, formerly a member of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), praised the "heroic and rare attack" in France, hailing the Kouachi brothers as "two soldiers of Islam... who humiliated France". 

France "thought that it was immune to the strikes of the mujahedeen", he said in a statement.

AQIM has also welcomed the Paris killings and warned France to expect more.

The branch of Al Qaeda is active in North Africa, while AQAP operates mainly in the lawless desert regions of eastern Yemen.

AQAP took advantage of an uprising in 2011 against now-ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh and seized large swathes of territory across southern Yemen, although most of its militants later fled to the east.

CAIRO/ISTANBUL — Muslim clerics in the Middle East who have denounced last week's attack on Charlie Hebdo criticised the French satirical weekly on Wednesday for publishing new cartoons depicting Islam's Prophet Mohammad in its first issue after the killings.

On the front of its "survivor's edition", which swiftly sold out its multimillion copy print run in France, the newspaper printed a cartoon of a tearful Mohammad carrying a sign reading "I am Charlie", under the headline "All is forgiven".

While mainstream Muslim leaders around the world have strongly condemned the attack on the newspaper, many said its decision to print more cartoons of Mohammad was an unnecessary provocation and sign of disrespect that would create a new backlash.

Such cartoons "fuel feelings of hatred and resentment among people" and publishing them "shows contempt" for Muslim feelings, said Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestinian lands Mohammed Hussein in a statement.

Algeria's independent Arab language daily Echorouk responded with a front-page cartoon of its own, showing a man carrying a "Je suis Charlie" placard next to a military tank crushing placards from Palestine, Mali, Gaza, Iraq and Syria.

Above, the headline reads: "We are all Mohammad."

In Turkey, a secular opposition newspaper printed excerpts from the Charlie Hebdo edition but balked at including the cover image depicting Mohammad. Police cordoned off its headquarters over security concerns.

In Iran, a leading conservative cleric, Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, said the publication of new satirical images of Mohammad "amounts to declaring war on all Muslims".

Egypt's Al Azhar, a thousand-year-old seat of Islamic learning that has referred to the Paris attack as a criminal act, called on Muslims on Wednesday to ignore the magazine's cartoons, labelling them "hateful frivolity".

Many people on the streets in the Middle East said it was time to move on.

"The cartoons have no meaning, they should not affect us. We as Muslims are bigger and stronger than some cartoon. We should not pay attention, and if we react we should react with word for word and cartoon for cartoon," said Samir Mahmoud, a retired engineer in Cairo.

Emad Awad, a Christian in Cairo, said he understood the anger of his Muslim neighbours but hoped there would be no more unrest.

"I reject completely that pictures of the prophet be published anywhere, but they've made their decision to do it yet again, to show their freedoms aren't changed," he said.

"Now that they've made their point, I really hope this is the last time they do this. I don't think it will lead to more violence, but they missed an opportunity to leave the subject in the past and move forward."

The newspaper's defenders said the cover balanced a determination to demonstrate that it remains committed to its satirical mission and free speech, with an appropriately mournful tone and a peaceful message.

"I wrote 'all is forgiven' and I cried," Renald "Luz" Luzier, who created the image, told a news conference on Tuesday at the weekly's temporary office at left-wing daily Liberation.

"This is our front page... it's not the one the terrorists wanted us to draw," he said. "I'm not worried at all... I trust people's intelligence, the intelligence of humour." 

Turkish paper reprints

In Turkey, Cumhuriyet, a staunchly secular opposition newspaper, printed excerpts of Charlie Hebdo, one of five international editions of the satirical newspaper.

Cumhuriyet dedicated four of its pages to Charlie Hebdo articles and cartoons. It printed a small, black-and-white version of the cover in one of its columns, but did not use the image in the special section itself, after "many consultations", its editor in chief Utku Cakirozer said on Twitter.

Police had cordoned off the street where Cumhuriyet is located in Istanbul due to security concerns. At its Ankara offices, protesters hung banners on a nearby wall that read: "The Charlie provocation continues."

Police had stopped trucks carrying the newspaper from the printing press to ensure it did not contain the image of Prophet Mohammad, Milliyet newspaper reported. Insulting the prophet is punishable with a prison term under a clause in the Turkish penal code that bars disrespect of religious values.

Saudi cleric Iyad Ameen Madani, Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, denounced the new cartoon as "insolence, ignorance and foolishness".

"Freedom of speech must not become a hate-speech and it is not an offence to the others. No sane person, regardless of doctrine, religion or faith, accepts his beliefs being ridiculed," he said on a visit to Iraq.

GAZA CITY — Hundreds of Hamas employees began a sit-in in front of the headquarters of the Palestinian unity government in Gaza on Tuesday, vowing to stay until their salaries were paid.

"Our sit-in is peaceful and we do not want to destroy public property, but we will stay here until our members are recognised and their salaries paid," union spokesman Khalil Al Zayan said.

Zayan noted that staff recruited by the former Hamas administration had not received any wages for seven months.

"They can no longer support their families, this is unacceptable," he said of the crisis looming over a spring reconciliation agreement between the Islamist group and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fateh movement.

Since striking the deal, Hamas has been demanding the new government pay the salaries of the 50,000 civil servants it recruited after its takeover of Gaza in 2007, who took the jobs of 70,000 Fatah employees.

Partial payments of $1,200 each were made to 24,000 Hamas civil servants in late October. But the other 26,000, who work in security functions, have received nothing.

"We've had enough of the false promises. Either the government resigns or it takes all of Gaza's responsibilities, like in the West Bank," Zayan said.

At the end of December, hundreds of Hamas civil servants blocked the entrance to the unity government's headquarters during a visit to Gaza by West Bank-based ministers.