THE fragile Middle East truce was near collapse last night as Israel and the Palestinian Authority launched deadly strikes against Hamas in three-way fighting unprecedented in recent times.

From early morning yesterday Palestinian security forces fought running gun battles with the Islamic militant group in the streets of Gaza, in a show of force which was intended to halt militant rocket attacks on Israel, but ended with Hamas gunmen dancing on the burning wreckage of police vehicles.

Barely had the dust cleared from the internecine fighting — which shocked Palestinian bystanders, rescue workers and religious leaders — when Israel launched helicopter strikes that killed seven Hamas members in Gaza and the West Bank.

Under fire from two sides Hamas struck back, driving the Palestinian security forces out of its Gaza strongholds and threatening further retaliation against Israel.

The violence raises the stakes before Israel’s planned pullout from Gaza due in 30 days, although officials insisted it would not be cancelled.

“The pullout cannot commence under fire,” said Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister. “The response to terror acts will be strong and harsh.”

Alarmed by the rapidly escalating crisis, the State Department in Washington announced that Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, would visit Israel and the Palestinian territories in the coming days to help keep the planned pullout from Gaza on track.

The clashes are among the worst since militant groups agreed a truce brokered in Cairo by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, in February. The attacks intensified with Tuesday’s Islamic Jihad suicide bomb which killed five Israelis in Netanya.

Israeli reprisal raids and Hamas mortar attacks followed, the latter killing an Israeli woman on Thursday.

Mr Abbas was furious that Hamas undermined his authority by timing the attacks just as he arrived in Gaza for talks. He ordered Palestinian security forces to crack down on the rocket attacks, and sent units into Hamas’s Gaza strongholds at dawn, hoping that this would satisfy calls from Israel and Washington for decisive action against the militants.

One official in Gaza said police were ordered to go in “as hard as they can.”

Shrewdly sidestepping Hamas jibes that he was collaborating with Israel, Mr Abbas’s officials insisted he was acting in Palestinian interests to ensure Israel does not cancel the Gaza pullout.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a senior Abbas aide, said: “Orders were given to the security apparatus to do their duty in full, without any restrictions. All the Palestinians got the message clearly, that there will be one authority, one law.”

In Zaytoun, a Hamas bastion and scene of some of the heaviest fighting, Palestinian Authority forces and Hamas gunmen exchanged fire, riddling with bullets buildings shattered by Israeli attacks 15 months ago.

The outcome was two dead — including a 13-year-old boy and an adult civilian — and 37 injured in hospital wards filled with injured police, suspected militants and civilians lying side by side. “This is not a good situation,” said Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, a 20-year-old member of the Palestinian Authority’s Force 17, wincing at the pain from bullet injuries to the right leg. “Today was nothing, but if it continues like this, it is going to go crazy. It could end in civil war.”

In Zaytoun the contempt among Islamist Hamas supporters for Mr Abbas and his secular Fatah-dominated forces was palpable. “We defeated the Israelis,” jeered Muhammad, 25, as masked Hamas men struck victory poses on a burning armoured car. “It is much easier to beat these scum.”

But within hours some of the same celebrating Hamas members were dead, killed by Israeli airstrikes. After helicopter missiles killed three of the group’s armed wing in an abandoned house near Nablus in the West Bank, four more were blown apart by another airborne missile in Gaza City.

Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator, condemned the airstrikes, saying it “comes at a time when we are trying to maintain the rule of law”, and complaining that it undermined Mr Abbas’s authority.

Israel’s calculation appears to be that by striking hard and massing tanks on the edge of Gaza — as it did last night — it focuses Palestinians on the reality that if Mr Abbas does not act, they will.

“People are getting killed every day. What do they want us to do, wait until they finish the futile experience of talking to Hamas?” said Raanan Gissin, an Israeli government spokesman.

“We haven’t shown all the capability we have against those who launch rockets, but now is the time of reckoning.” This morning, Israeli helicopters fired two more missiles at metal factories in Gaza City.

Defiant Hamas supporters gathered around the mortuary in Gaza City’s hospital, cries of anger mingling with chants of “Allahu Akbar”.

“Israel has opened upon itself the doors of hell by assassinating the Mujahidin and assassinating the tahdiyah (calm)”, said Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman.

“The forces of resistance shall not stand aside before these crimes.”

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