In this handout image provided by the Palestinian Press Office (PPO), Palestinian President Mahmoud... 
(Omar Rashidi/PPO via Getty Images)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces have significantly widened a crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank in the past month. They have doubled the number of detainees and are increasingly targeting the wives of activists, school teachers and others on the fringes of the Islamic militant group, Hamas officials say.
In the same period, police in Hamas-ruled Gaza have picked up dozens of Abbas loyalists, said officials in Abbas' Fatah movement.
The bitter rivals accuse each other of using the sweeps for political leverage, as they try to negotiate an elusive power-sharing deal and the terms of general elections in January. A Palestinian unity government is seen as crucial to U.S. efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, since Israel says it can't make concessions to the divided Palestinians.
Tit-for-tat detentions have been carried out over the two years since Hamas overran Gaza, ousting the forces loyal to Abbas, who was left with just the West Bank. Since then, each side has being trying to assert more control and wipe out the rival's power base, amid persistent allegations of mistreatment of detainees.
Since June 2007, Abbas' security forces — fearful of a Hamas takeover in the West Bank — detained hundreds of Hamas activists, closed Hamas-run charities and dried up the group's funding.
Hamas legislator Mahmoud Ramahi said this week that there has been a sharp spike in detentions, from 460 in custody at the end of May to a total of 887 behind bars a month later, a new record.
"June was a crazy month for detention," Ramahi said. "It's clear that they (Fatah activists) want to put political pressure on the movement by forcing it to accept Fatah's conditions for reconciliation and to control the movement's activities."
Several Abbas aides dismissed the Hamas allegations of political arrests. They claimed this week that the militants were involved in plots to attack Palestinian security compounds and government officials in the West Bank, but provided no evidence.
