(Updates with Fayyad's comment, paragraph 5) By Mohammed Assadi JERICHO, West Bank, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Israel drove 88 Palestinians allied to President Mahmoud Abbas to the West Bank on Monday two days after they fled clashes with Hamas in Gaza that cemented the Islamist group's hold on the coastal enclave. Their two-bus convoy was escorted by Israeli police and army vehicles across Israel to the Palestinian-run town of Jericho and the men were taken to a security compound controlled by Abbas's Fatah-dominated forces. Israel said 181 members of the Helles clan, one of the most powerful Gaza families associated with Abbas's secular Fatah group, sought refuge in Israel on Saturday after a fierce assault by Hamas on their Gaza City neighbourhood that killed 11 people and wounded more than 90. Hamas said it carried out the raid on the Helles compound on Saturday to detain men it accused of carrying out a July 25 bombing that killed five Hamas members and a girl. Israel said it sent 60 Helles family members back to Gaza, citing a request from Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who later pledged to try to ensure that the rest go back to Gaza "as soon as possible." "Israeli authorities halted the process, however, as they received information that they were being arrested by Hamas and that their lives were in immediate danger," the Israeli army said in a statement. An Israeli civil rights group had earlier appealed to the country's high court, arguing it would be inhumane to force members of the Helles clan to return to Gaza. Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the Helles family was welcome to return to Gaza. "We assured them of their safety," he said. But he added the fact that family members fled to Israel "proved they had been involved in breaking the law." "HUMANITARIAN GESTURE" The head of Israeli army civil administration in the West Bank, Yoav Mordechai, said Israel transported the Palestinians to Jericho at the request of Abbas's government "as a humanitarian gesture". He told reporters that the 88 men who arrived in Jericho on Monday will not be allowed to leave the town for the time being. An Israeli security official said 16 of the Palestinians remained in hospital in Israel and that 13 were still undergoing Israeli questioning. The official said four Helles clan members arrived in the West Bank on Sunday without fanfare. Many Fatah leaders in the occupied West Bank still blame members of the Helles clan for not resisting Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007. The tug-of-war over the Helles clan underscored lingering resentment within Fatah more than a year after Hamas routed Abbas's faction and violently seized control of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army initially said it had planned to transport members of the Helles clan to the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Abbas's government is based. It was not immediately clear why the destination was changed. Tensions between Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions, surged after the July 25 bombing, which triggered tit-for-tat crackdowns in Gaza by Hamas and in the West Bank by Fatah. Abbas's forces in the northern West Bank city of Jenin arrested 25 Hamas leaders on Monday, including 15 members of the Islamist group's local Shura leadership council. In what it described as a "goodwill gesture", Hamas said on Monday it released Abbas's top Fatah representative in the Gaza Strip, Zakaria al-Agha, after four days in detention. (Additional reporting by Avida Landau in Jerusalem, Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; Writing by Adam Entous; Editing by Sami Aboudi)
A Palestinian who fled clashes with Hamas in Gaza walks past an Israeli soldier upon his arrival at a checkpoint outside the West Bank town of Jericho August 4, 2008. Israel ...
