RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) — Palestinian police killed one man in the West Bank on Tuesday as it broke up rallies against a US peace meeting, while Hamas supporters in Gaza rallied in force against the conference.
Palestinian security forces fired into the air and pummelled demonstrators with batons as they dispersed protests throughout the occupied West Bank against the meeting opening in the US city of Annapolis.
Riot police and other security forces moved in on members of the Hezb al-Tahrir (Islamic Liberation Party) as soon as they left mosques in the cities of Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron aiming to march in demonstrations.
In Hebron, 36-year-old Hisham Baradi died in hospital of a gunshot wound received in the melee. The circumstances surrounding the shooting were not immediately clear. At least 35 other people were wounded.
It was not immediately clear how many people were wounded or detained in all, with AFP correspondents seeing dozens hauled away in police vans in all three cities.
Earlier in Ramallah, police broke up demonstrations in the central Al-Manara Square after scuffling with the protestors for several hours.
On Monday, president Mahmud Abbas's government banned rallies against the Annapolis meeting, with information minister Riyad al-Malki saying the decision was taken because "we look forward to the Annapolis meeting being successful."
Abbas faces a yawning internal divide as he tries to embark on peace talks with the Israelis, after the radical Hamas movement violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in mid-June.
Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters poured into central Gaza City on Tuesday for a rally to reject the Annapolis meeting in the Islamists' latest protest against the conference.
Waving the green flags of Hamas and the Palestinian tricolour, demonstrators flocked from all over the impoverished and overcrowded territory where Hamas has been increasingly isolated.
"They can go to thousands of conferences and we will still say in the name of the Palestinian people that we do not accept," Hamas hardliner Mahmud Zahar told the assembled crowd.
"We don't authorise anyone to use our name to sign any document or any agreement that infringes on our national demands," he said.
Blacklisted by both the European Union and the United States as a terror group and not invited to the US meeting, Hamas said on Monday that it would not be bound by any decisions taken there.
"Any concessions on any Palestinian rights are unacceptable and the Palestinian people will not implement any decisions if they touch on our rights," said the premier of the sacked Hamas government, Ismail Haniya.
Haniya slammed the participation of Arab countries -- including powerhouse Saudi Arabia -- in the US peace meeting despite Hamas's appeals for a boycott.
"We are against any attempts for either direct or indirect normalisation (with Israel) and are against the presence, for the first time, of an Arab delegation by the side of a Zionist delegation at the Annapolis conference," Haniya said.
"Such a presence is a step back on the historical position of opposition (to Israel) by these countries," he said.
The Islamists refuse to recognise Israel or renounce violence, and have warned the Palestinian leadership against making any concessions on the most intractable issues of the conflict such as the right of return for refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
Having swept aside Abbas's long-dominant Fatah party in January 2006 parliamentary polls, Hamas argues that without its agreement the president lacks the mandate to negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians.
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