Israel's Olmert sees risk of West Bank, Gaza split

PARIS - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed concern today that factional Palestinian in-fighting could split the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinians seek statehood in the two territories that Israel captured from Jordan and Egypt in a 1967 war.

Although only 45 km apart at their closest point, the West Bank and Gaza have political differences.

Congested and coastal Gaza is a stronghold of Hamas Islamists, who recently swept to government, while the more moderate Fatah faction holds sway in the hilly West Bank.

"A separation between Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza is something that would arouse great distress in me. It is not something we want," a senior Israeli official quoted Olmert as saying during a visit to France.

However, the official said Olmert did not rule out the possibility that intensifying fighting between Hamas and Fatah supporters could lead to an outright split of the territories.

"How things will turn out is not for me to say," he said.

Israel pulled its troops out of Gaza last year but wants to keep some Jewish settlements in the West Bank under any future peace deal.

Palestinians have long suspected that Israeli military clampdowns during a more than 5-year-old Palestinian revolt are at least partly aimed at curbing their independence aspirations.

Olmert is visiting Britain and France, where he has sought a strong European stance against the Hamas-led government and has also promoted his "realignment plan" under which Israel would set its own borders unilaterally.

- REUTERS