Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that a new emergency Palestinian government due to be sworn in on Sunday would be a partner for peace in negotiations.
'A government that is not a Hamas government is a partner,' Mr Olmert told reporters.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Fatah supporters have fled the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as the Islamist group threatened to take its fight against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's forces to the West Bank.
President Abbas, who leads the secular Fatah faction, prepared to swear in his new government that is set to bring an end to a US-led aid embargo. He sacked a Hamas-led unity government after Islamist forces routed Fatah in the Gaza Strip and began imposing a new order.
Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said 150 Hamas supporters were ‘abducted’ in the occupied West Bank in what he called acts of ‘real terrorism’ by Fatah forces there. ‘We will not stand handcuffed against these crimes in the West Bank. We will take all steps to secure an end to these crimes,’ he said.
The US consul-general to the region said Washington would lift a ban on direct financial aid to the new emergency government, clearing the way for the European Union and Israel to follow suit.
‘There won't be any obstacles economically and politically in terms of re-engaging with this government ... They will have full support,’ Jacob Walles told reporters after meeting Mr Abbas at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.
The United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations have all voiced support for President Abbas and concern about humanitarian conditions in Gaza, but did not say whether it would ease its ban on direct aid to an Abbas-controlled Palestinian Authority.
Gaza and the much larger West Bank are only about 45 km apart, with Israel in between, but they now appear poised to function as two separate territories.
An aide to President Abbas said that Gaza, at this stage is out of the control of the Palestinian Authority.
For its part, Hamas said it did not seek its own state in Gaza, where 1.5 million people live crowded along 40 km of coast.
Western powers imposed an aid embargo after Hamas came to power in March 2006 because it failed to recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept interim peace deals.
Hamas has set up checkpoints in Gaza to prevent high-ranking Fatah officials from leaving the coastal enclave.
Palestinian officials said hundreds of Fatah supporters were allowed by Israel and Egypt to travel to the West Bank.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said Israel had allowed people to leave Gaza for the West Bank on a case-by-case basis.
Earlier, about 50 Fatah gunmen and 200 other demonstrators stormed a Palestinian parliament building in Ramallah. The militants grabbed the deputy speaker, who is aligned with Hamas, and dragged him from the building, witnesses said. He was not hurt.
In Hebron militants of al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Fatah, stormed government offices and set up checkpoints to search for Hamas members. Many Fatah supporters in Gaza fear reprisals from Hamas
President Abbas has picked Salam Fayyad, a Western-backed technocrat and formerly finance minister, to serve as prime minister of the emergency government in what Hamas said amounted to a coup.
The government will be sworn in on Sunday morning and will comprise 11 lawmakers, Abbas aides said.
Ismail Haniyeh, who became prime minister after Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary election, refuses to accept his dismissal.
