GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The success of the internal Palestinian reconciliation hinges in large part on how the parties involved handle their highly sensitive security issues. For years — since their violent split in 2007 — security has posed the biggest stumbling block for both the Fatah and Hamas rival political parties and has hampered all Arab and regional efforts toward their reunification.

The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank has always refused to allow Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip to merge with its own.

Another security-related issue recently came up, namely what to do with those officers affiliated with Fatah’s Reformist Current, which was headed by dismissed Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan. These officers represent a large part of the Preventive Security Service, also known as the Palestinian Preventive Security (PPS), founded by Dahlan in 1994 by order of late President Yasser Arafat. Over the years, the PA has cut the salaries of hundreds of these officers in both Gaza and the West Bank and forced many into early retirement in the wake of the dispute that broke out in 2010 between Dahlan and PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

A senior PA security official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that PA security has formed committees in the Gaza Strip to investigate all the officers under age 45 who plan to remain within the ranks of the security services, particularly those affiliated with Dahlan’s faction, to either dismiss them or force them into early retirement.