A Hamas-run court in the Gaza Strip has sentenced eight members of Fatah’s security forces to jail terms ranging from seven years to life in prison for “undermining revolutionary unity,” The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday.

Hamas’s Interior Ministry stated that the men, who have been unemployed since Hamas’s 2007 takeover of the Gaza Strip, had gathered intelligence about “the resistance factions, its structures, and tunnels.”

“We forcefully deplore and denounce the Hamas court’s ruling in Gaza, which came at the expense of eight Fatah members, on the basis of false and absurd claims,” stated Gaza-based Fatah official Fayez Abu Eitah, who also serves as co-vice chairman of the Fatah Revolutionary Council. “These rulings are arbitrary and political…and are a part of Hamas’s continued provocations against the Palestinian people.” Abu Eitah demanded that Hamas release the eight men.

The renewed rift between the two major Palestinian political parties comes one week after they announced in Russia that they had reached an agreement on a national unity government.

“This ruling shows just how far apart the two major Palestinian parties are from reconciliation,” Grant Rumley, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Post. “Both sides are ultimately beholden to the more hardline factions within their parties, and in this current climate those factions view the rivalry with the other party as ongoing and zero sum.”

This echoed an observation made by Jonathan Schanzer, the think tank’s vice president for research, who argued in Politico on Tuesday the that a prerequisite for peace between Israel and the Palestinians was “[solving] the Palestinian internecine conflict.” In addition to reconciling with Fatah, Schanzer wrote, Hamas would have to “disarm, relinquish its control of the Gaza Strip and allow for a single Palestinian Authority government to rule.”

[Photo: Wochit News / YouTube ]