Israeli media said the occupation army had seized documents showing the resistance Islamic group Hamas is trying to woo Egypt and sideline Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority as the leading force in the territories, a day after revealing alleged PA plans to build a bomb factory.Analysts said the revelation could reflect an alarming rise in support for the hardline group, which says the state of Israel should be abolished and replaced by an Islamic Palestinian state.

The raid on a Gaza preventive security base reportedly turned up documents suggesting that Hamas' talks in Cairo earlier this month, ostensibly to thrash out a deal with Arafat's Fatah to end attacks on civilians, were actually aimed at forging closer ties with Egypt, Israeli media said.

The captured documents showed that Hamas, which has spearheaded deadly attacks inside Israel, sought to use the Cairo talks to present itself as a viable alternative to the PA in the eyes of Egyptian officials.

"Hamas saw the talks as its opportunity to take a significant role in the Palestinian leadership", Israeli television quoted the document as saying.

The daily Haaretz said Hamas felt Egypt was looking at the possibility of co-operating with it as an alternative to the PA.

"Egypt is examining the possibility of working with Hamas as an alternative or at least as the main powerbroker in the Palestinian street," it quoted the pamphlet as saying.

Haaretz described the document, dated November 12, as an internal memorandum distributed to Hamas activists and Palestinian preventive security services in Gaza.

The Israeli daily Maariv said the Hamas plan was nothing less than a bid to "take over the PA and rebuild it anew."
Maariv said Hamas planned a creeping takeover by stages rather than a violent Islamic revolution, which lacked the resources to do.

The daily's editorial said that "considering the situation on the ground, such a plan of stages is not likely to take much time."

The Israeli occupation army declined to comment on the reports.

Israeli moderates, such as former foreign minister Shimon Peres, have warned that Israel's destruction of PA infrastructure and security forces in raids and mass arrests could open the way to Islamic hardliners.

Hamas has almost systematically ignored Arafat's ceasefire calls, including a proposal in Cairo that was endorsed by the Fatah movement to freeze attacks inside Israel while carrying on with armed operations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Haaretz said military intelligence assessments showed that Hamas believes the PA initiated the Cairo talks because of Hamas's recent surge in popularity among Palestinians, accompanied by a decline in the PA's power.

"Its position has been harmed, most of its institutions have collapsed, its infrastructure has been destroyed and its ranks are rife with division," the Hamas document said.

Israeli media reports also accused the PA Sunday of planning to produce explosives in a secret Gaza factory for attacks against Israeli targets, on the basis of other leaked classified Palestinian documents found during last week's Gaza raid.

A leading Palestinian security official in Gaza denied the charges, which he called "part of a campaign by Israeli security services to undermine officers and members of preventive security."

The accusation that Arafat's security forces planned to produce explosives for all armed factions could further undermine his standing with the main regional power-broker, the United States.

His credibility with Washington was critically hit in January when Israeli commandos seized a ship laden with arms which Israel said was bound from Iran for the Palestinian Authority.

Analysts say the capture of the Karine A was a key to US President George W. Bush's decision that Arafat must be dropped if the peace process is to be resurrected.

The Palestinians are due to hold elections in January for a new parliament, currently dominated by Fatah, although Israel's reoccupation of almost the entire West Bank has make the holding of polls increasingly unlikely.

The occupation army said Monday its constant searches of the reoccupied zones, designed to smash resistance groups, had netted 14 people overnight, including eight members of Hamas, its smaller rival Islamic Jihad and from the secular Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Hebron.

PHOTO CAPTION

Hamas supporters wear headbands while marching with green Islamic flags with Arabic reads 'No God but God and Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah' during a march Friday Nov. 22, 2002, in the Jabiliya refugee camp on the northern Gaza Strip, celebrating the resistance bombing which killed 11 bus passengers in Jerusalem Thursday. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)