Israel urged Palestinians to outlaw Hamas as a political and social movement, according to the latest batch of leaked documents published on Wednesday.

Al-Jazeera television reported what it said was a conversation between an Israeli security official, Yoav Mordechai, and the Palestinian Authority's Hassan Attalah.

It quoted Mordechai as asking what the Palestinians were doing to fight not only Hamas militants but its civilian activists, "people in municipalities for example, this is a very serious threat"

According to the report, Attalah concurred.

"I don't work at the political level but I agree, we need to deal with this."

"Hamas needs to be declared illegal by your president," Mordechai continued. "So far it's only the militants that are illegal."

On Sunday, Al-Jazeera began releasing what it says are more than 1,600 documents known as "The Palestine Papers," which have exposed some of the far-reaching concessions Palestinian negotiators have offered Israel during 10 years of secret peace talks.

The leaks also purport to show close security cooperation between the administration of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Israel in a common fight against Hamas, which is Fatah's bitter rival and is pledged to destroy the Jewish state.

In a separate file released on Sunday, Al-Jazeera quoted a February 2008 conversation between then Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qorei in which the two discuss the breach by Hamas of a border wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

"Does the opening of the border appear to be a victory for Hamas," Livni asks.

Qorei replies in the affirmative and asks what Israel intends to do about it. Livni responds that there is no longer an Israeli presence at the site, following its unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip.

"You reoccupied the West Bank and you can occupy the crossing if you want," Qorei was reported as replying.

In the southern Gaza town of Rafah, Hamas supporters hanged effigies of Abbas and officials of his Palestinian Authority after Islamic militant groups declared that he had forfeited the right to speak for Palestinians because of his cooperation with Israel.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Abbas has his headquarters, the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation issued a statement accusing al-Jazeera of carrying out "a tendentious campaign to distort the position of the Palestinian Authority" and bolster Hamas.

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