Scores of Fatah allies who fled to Israel from the Gaza Strip sought refuge in the West Bank on Monday after Israel decided they would face “immediate danger” from Gaza’s Hamas rulers if they were returned home.

The men are members of a Fatah-linked Gaza family who fled into Israel over the weekend during the bloodiest internal Palestinian fighting since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June 2007. In all, 11 people were killed and dozens wounded Saturday during a Hamas raid targeting the heavily armed Hilles clan.

The Palestinian president, Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, first asked Israel to send the men back home. Abbas apparently wanted his forces to retain a presence in Gaza despite the danger of reprisals from Hamas, and feared a mass flight of Fatah supporters from Gaza.

Palestinian officials said Abbas changed his mind when an initial group of 32 of the clansmen were sent back into Gaza on Sunday, only to be immediately arrested by Hamas. A statement from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s office Monday, however, said it was Israel that stopped sending them back when it “received information that they were being arrested by Hamas and that their lives were in immediate danger.”

Nearly 90 men boarded civilian buses in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba on Monday afternoon. Accompanied by Israeli military policemen, they were bound for the West Bank town of Jericho.

More than 180 members of the Hilles family escaped to Israel on Saturday. By Monday afternoon, around 60 had returned to Gaza, and the rest were either hospitalized in Israel or being questioned by Israeli security forces, Lerner said.

Sufian Abu Zaydeh, a Gaza native and former Palestinian Cabinet minister from Fatah, said the incident marked a new low.

“When a man stands between two choices: to be killed by his people or to be arrested by his enemy, and he reaches a conclusion that it is better to be arrested by his enemy, it shows you how cruel the situation is in Gaza,” he told Israel’s Army Radio Monday.

The Gazans are currently being held by the military in southern Israel, except for a small number who are being treated in Israeli hospitals.

The infighting between Fatah and Hamas has split the Palestinians into two distinct entities. The hardline Islamic Hamas is now firmly in control of Gaza, a point underlined by the group’s swift victory over the Hilles clan. Fatah has been left with the West Bank, where Abbas rules with a Western-backed government that is trying to negotiate a peace deal with Israel.

Last week two human rights groups reported that both Fatah and Hamas have tortured prisoners. The arrests in Gaza sparked fear that the Hilles clansmen would meet a similar fate if forced to return home.

By Monday, Hamas said it had freed all but five of those detained Sunday.

The latest round of internal fighting began on July 25 with an explosion that killed five Hamas members and a six-year-old girl in Gaza City. Blaming Fatah, Hamas rounded up dozens of Fatah activists, while Fatah responded with mass arrests of Hamas supporters.