The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Ramallah

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Monday that he was ready to "open a new page" with Hamas if the Islamist movement gave up its control of the Gaza Strip. But violence soon broke out in the southern Gaza Strip, with at least five people killed and 40 wounded in clashes between Fatah loyalists and Hamas police. "I call on those who carried out the putscht to open a new page," Abbas told Fatah officials gathered to mark 43 years since the secular party first declared itself an armed Palestinian resistance movement. Cooperation between the Palestinians' two main parties should be based "on a partnership in the heart of the fatherland and around the struggle for its liberations," he said. "No party should supplant another. The putsch and the military edge should not be a part of our vocabulary. Only dialogue should prevail."