RAMALLAH, West Bank - The Palestinians were edging closer Saturday to achieving the long-elusive goal of forming a national unity government after civil servants agreed to end a months-old strike, a top official in the Hamas-led government said.

Deputy prime minister Nasseredine al-Shaer said the deal was the "first of a number of accords on matters linked to the formation of a government of national unity that should be announced in the near future".

Concretely, he pointed to a "deal on internal security that is now being drafted".

The news that 80,000 state employees would return to work was the latest encouraging development on the Palestinian front as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel in a bid to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

On Friday, it was disclosed that mediators were working to arrange a meeting between Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and the Damascus-based leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, that one of them said could lead to a national accord being signed as early as next week.

But only hours before Rice landed in Israel, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya accused the United States and Israel of pushing his people towards civil war.

Haniya, whose Islamist movement is engaged in a deadly power struggle with Abbas's Fatah party, made the claim as he called on the two sides to halt the feuding that has claimed more than 30 lives in the past month.

"The American and Israeli policies seek to push the Palestinian people towards civil war and internal conflict so that the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict becomes a Palestinian-Palestinian conflict," he said in a televised address from his office in Gaza City.

The fighting erupted last month after Abbas, frustrated by months of failure to agree a unity government acceptable to Western donors, announced that he would call early parliamentary and presidential elections.

Haniya accused the United States and Israel of pursuing a strategy toward the Palestinians, of which the main pillar is "not to allow the formation of a Palestinian national unity government" capable of ending the crippling Western aid freeze imposed after his administration took power in March.

The policy, which he said has "never stopped," also aims to "reinforce and consolidate (Israeli) occupation and settlements" in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Haniya said it was a "legitimate national and religious duty" to continue pushing for the formation of a coalition government.

"I call for the resumption of the national dialogue inside and abroad to form a national unity government on the basis of the national conciliation document."

That was a reference to a proposal made by a group of prominent Palestinian militants held in Israeli jails.

It implicitly recognises Israel's right to exist by calling for a Palestinian state on land occupied in 1967, as well as for an end to attacks in Israel and a national unity government.

Haniya acknowledged that dialogue on national unity had broken down over "differences," which he did not spell out.

Fatah later issued a statement in which it welcomed the tone of Haniya's message but called for concrete measures.

"We had been expecting him to speak responsibly and to take real measures on the ground and to start an investigation of several crimes and violations that happened recently in Gaza in which several of our people have been killed," it said.

The statement said Fatah had also been expecting Haniya to "take a decision to suspend the Executive Force and take it off the streets."

That was in reference to an armed group formed by Hamas in Gaza last year and attached to the interior ministry.

On Friday, sources said that Islamic Jihad, a smaller rival of Hamas, and Egypt were mediating to break the political deadlock and "contain the explosive situation in the Gaza Strip after the recent clashes."

An Islamic Jihad leader, Mohammed al-Hindi, said in Cairo that he had met with several Egyptian officials in recent days as well as with a delegation from Fatah, led by its Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan.

He said a meeting between Abbas and Meshaal could end a standoff between the two parties. "I hope that these efforts will be rewarded by the signature of a national accord in Cairo in the coming days," Hindi said.

- AFP /ls