WASHINGTON — The State Department is recommending that three American journalists now based in Gaza leave the Palestinian Arab-controlled territory in light of a brewing Fatah-Hamas war for power.

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the Palestinian Arab prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, narrowly escaped a rocket-propelled grenade attack on his home — an attack that he says was a Fatah assassination attempt.

Meanwhile, Fatah Party leaders and legislators met to decide whether the party founded by Yasser Arafat still would participate in the Palestinian Arab government.

With Fatah apparently having lost control of the northern part of the enclosed Gaza Strip, Israel now faces the prospect that a territory that it vacated in 2005 will be controlled in 2007 by Hamas, a party bound by its charter to destroy the Jewish state.

Since mid-May, more than 80 Palestinian Arabs have been killed. Hamas reportedly receives arms and money from the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the official head of the Hamas Party, Khaled Meshaal, is based in Damascus, Syria.

In this environment, the State Department quietly asked major American news organizations not to send correspondents to the territory and recommended that the McClatchey News service, National Public Radio, and the Daily Telegraph of London recall their reporters from the war zone.

Yesterday, one of those reporters, Charles Levinson of the Telegraph, said he would stay for now.

“Our movement is limited, and we’re basically confined to a Fatah-controlled enclave around the president’s compound right now. But all three of us have experience reporting in conflict zones, in Iraq, Lebanon, and in Gaza, and we feel we can operate here with minimal risk, or else we wouldn’t be here,” he said in an instant message.

The State Department is worried that an American reporter could be kidnapped, as was Alan Johnston, a BBC correspondent who was taken hostage on March 12 by a group calling itself the Islamic Army. On June 1, a Web video of Mr. Johnston surfaced where he appeared forced to repeat a script about the suffering of Gazans and the imperial wishes of Britain in their assault on Islamic lands.

A State Department official yesterday described the message to the three news outlets as follows: “The line was you don’t want to end up like the BBC Allen Johnston right now.” Another State Department official said the word to news organizations was sent through the consulate in Jerusalem. This official added that there was no specific intelligence about plans to kidnap more journalists.

The conflict in Gaza today in some ways represents a pending failure for American foreign policy since 1991, when the first President Bush authorized the CIA to begin recruiting members of Arafat’s old Fatah Party based in Tunisia for the future security services of the Palestinian Authority. One of the biggest points of contention for Hamas today is that they have not been able to put their men in charge of the Palestinian Arab security services and national police. Those institutions, for the most part, are still run by men loyal to Fatah.

Mr. Levinson yesterday said Fatah’s refusal to share control over the four main security and police forces for the Palestinian Authority was a major grievance for Hamas. “It’s hard to see a political negotiated settlement unless real compromises are made on control of security forces,” he said.

As it stands now, many of the leaders that America hoped would fight Hamas are missing in action. For example, the founder of the preventive security service in Gaza, Mahmoud Dahlan, is undergoing hospital treatment in Cairo and has not been in Gaza for three months. Last month, the current Fatah security chief in Gaza, Rashid Abu Shabak, resigned his post after Hamas gunmen raided his home and killed six of his bodyguards.

For almost a year, America has quietly funded a program aimed at giving counterterrorism training to the personal guard force loyal to President Abbas of Fatah.