Palestinian security forces loyal to Hamas and Fatah have both carried out serious human rights abuses over the past year, including arbitrary arrests and torture, according to a report on the bitter power struggle.
Human Rights Watch, in the report released today, cited a pattern of politically motivated arrests, mock executions and severe beatings in detention centres run by Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas's secular Fatah faction in the West Bank.
It faulted the United States and other donors, who have bankrolled Mr Abbas's Palestinian Authority and Fatah-dominated security forces, for "not paying adequate attention to the systematic abuses by those forces".
Hamas, which receives support from Iran and other Islamist allies, routed Fatah in the Gaza Strip a year ago, seizing control of the coastal enclave after months of fighting that killed hundreds. Mr Abbas and his Fatah-led security forces still hold sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Internal tensions spiked again after a bomb blast killed five Hamas militants and a girl in the Gaza Strip on Friday. Hundreds of Hamas and Fatah supporters have since been detained in both territories in tit-for-tat crackdowns.
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip declined to comment on the Human Rights Watch report, but the group says those who commit abuses are punished.
Senior Fatah official Hussein al-Sheikh said Fatah forces in the West Bank were acting within the law and accused Hamas of using "savage and brutal practices".
Most abuse cases documented by Human Rights Watch in the West Bank involved Abbas's General Intelligence and Preventive Security services, which Abbas has granted broad law enforcement powers to protect his West Bank-based government.