Mediation by Qatar's foreign minister failed to resolve a row between feuding Palestinian leaders, bringing closer the possibility of fresh elections, a senior aide to Mr President Mahmoud Abbas said today.
Yasser Abed Rabbo
A stalemate between Abbas and the Hamas-led government over forming a unity government has triggered the worst internal fighting in a decade and stirred fears of civil war.
"The differences on the core issues have remained ... It does not seem as if we are closer to an agreement," aide Yasser Abed Rabbo said after overnight talks in Gaza involving Qatari foreign minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani.
"This initiative is the last political effort that is being exerted and the opportunity must be seized because the alternative is to hold early elections."
Mr Abed Rabbo said talks failed because of Hamas's stance toward Israel, which the group is sworn to destroy.
Earlier today an Israeli missile hit the Gaza Strip home of a well known Hamas lawmaker today in what the army said was an attack on a weapons factory.
In the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian hospital workers said a civilian had been shot dead during an Israeli raid. The army said it believed it had shot a man who was planting a bomb.
There were no reports of casualties in the strike in Gaza on the building of Mariam Farhat, better known as Umm Nidal, who has often voiced pride at the death of three of her six sons during a Palestinian uprising.
Residents were warned in advance of the attack. Israel has frequently carried out such strikes on buildings it says are used by militants during a three-month-old Gaza offensive to try to recover a captured soldier and stop cross-border rocket fire.
"There was an air strike on a weapons storage and manufacturing facility," an army spokeswoman said.
Farhat was one of the best known of the Hamas parliamentarians elected in January when the Islamist group dedicated to destroying Israel defeated moderate President Abbas's Fatah.
She first won attention for appearing with her 17-year-old son Mohammed in a video recorded before he carried out a shooting attack on a Jewish settlement in 2000 in which he killed five people before being shot dead.
Israel abandoned its Gaza Strip settlements in September 2005, but launched an offensive in the territory in June after the abduction of the soldier in a raid over the border by Palestinian militants, including Hamas's armed wing.
Since then, Israel has also detained dozens of Hamas officials, including ministers and lawmakers, in the West Bank.
Emergency workers in Nablus said that a Palestinian had been shot in the head inside the house where he was staying as gunmen and Israeli troops clashed nearby.