Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Fatah organization, held his first public meeting with Hamas members on Friday since Hamas's armed takeover of Gaza in June, 2007. The meeting was held in Abbas's Ramallah office.

Afterwards, the Hamas and Fatah members held Muslim afternoon prayers together in the Fatah governmental compound, known as the Mukata.

A PA spokesman said that, in principle, Abbas "had no problem" with Hamas.

After the meeting and prayers, Abbas told reporters that he had not begun official talks with Hamas. Abbas's spokesmen insisted that the PA leader told his guests that he would refuse to talk to Hamas until the group agreed to return Fatah control over Gaza.

Attending on behalf of Hamas at the meeting were Nasserdine Al-Shaer, a former PA Deputy Prime Minister, as well as senior Hamas representatives Farraj Rumana, Hussein Abu Kuweik and Ayman Daraghmeh. Speaking with the French news agency AFP, a PA spokesman said that, in principle, Abbas "had no problem" with Hamas. Rather, said the spokesman, there is a "small group" that "deviated from the right path in carrying out a coup."

Any such Fatah-Hamas reconciliation at this stage, according to spokesmen for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, would "threaten progress in the negotiations and compromise future progress."

Hamas members who attended the meeting said that, while it was a positive development, it was not yet an official dialogue. Abu Kuweik said that he hoped it was a "prelude to dialogue." Pressed over the seeming reconciliation in Judea and Samaria while Hamas in Gaza is still pressing ahead with its battle to fight Fatah influence, Abu Kuweik insisted that Hamas is "a single body."

Last week, Hamas Sheikh Nizar Riyan warned Abbas that he would "fall like the autumn leaves," and that Hamas would hold its Friday prayers in the Mukata in the near future. Riyan's statement implied a threat that Hamas was planning a violent takeover in Judea and Samaria. Fatah leaders have regularly claimed that Hamas is preparing such an overthrow.

In efforts to curtail Hamas influence in Judea and Samaria, Fatah-controlled PA police have been conducting widespread arrests of Hamas clerics in Judea and Samaria, according to the British newspaper, The Guardian. The crackdown follows the closure of Hamas-linked charities, several of which were raided by IDF forces. The PA head of religious affairs in Shechem, Hassan Hilali, defended the arrests as preventing preachers from changing "the mosque into something with a political identity, or a certain ideology, or linked to a particular group or cult."

A Hamas religious leader, Sheikh Fayyad Al-Akbar, charged that he and others have been replaced "by people close to Fatah," who were ordered to recognize the faction as the sole authority in the PA, although Hamas won legislative elections a year and a half ago.

In Gaza, Hamas is instituting its authority in similar fashion. According to the PA news agency WAFA, controlled by Fatah, former PA official Abu Al-Abed Dirawi was recently kidnapped and tortured by Hamas gunmen. Doctors described Dirawi's wounds as "severe." 

Clashes between Fatah and Hamas have continued intermittently since the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Hamas leaders have blamed Fatah for recent explosions that killed several Hamas terrorists.