Now get back to making peace

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia,speaking at a recent,fractious Arab summit meeting in Kuwait,gave warning to Palestinians that their own rifts were more dangerous than Israeli aggression. Palestinians who have long despaired at the quarrel between Fatah,the secular,peace-talking party that runs the West Bank,and Hamas,the Islamist champion of resistance which won legislative elections in 2006 and seized power in Gaza a year later,would heartily agree. Yet although the war has prompted a chorus of demands for the parties to come to terms before the Gaza-West Bank split dooms any chance of a unified Palestinian state,it has also accentuated their differences.

Hamas spokesmen accuse Mahmoud Abbas,the Fatah leader and internationally recognised head of the rump government known as the Palestinian Authority (PA),of colluding with Israels onslaught. Hamas says that since his term as president has expired he should step down. Some mutter that Fatah agents even gave intelligence to enable Israel to assassinate several top Hamas officials. According to some reports,Hamas has already killed suspected Fatah collaborators in Gaza.

The wars longer-term impact on Palestinian opinion is hard to assess. Opinion polls before the fighting had shown a steady erosion of support for the Islamists,even in Gaza,where the PA still pays state salaries. A wartime surge in emotional identification with Hamas is likely to fade,but this may not boost Mr Abbas,whose efforts to coax Israel into peace,while lauded in the West,have produced few gains on the ground. The Fatah leader provoked outrage when he blamed Hamas for stupidly provoking Israels attack,then told police to stamp out protests in the West Bank,which Fatah still controls. He is now a political corpse, says one independent Palestinian analyst,suggesting that younger Fatah activists,who have long bridled at the groups domination by an aid-padded coterie of Mr Abbass loyalists,may now try not only to oust them but to renounce peace talks with Israel.

The weakening of the Fatah-run PA has prompted some in both parties to call yet again for a unity government and for early elections to give a new government a more legitimate mandate. But while harder-line members of Hamas say the heroism of their self-declared victory in Gaza is legitimacy enough,Fatahs older guard seems determined to cling to its historic dominance of the Palestinian national movement. Hamas also demands the release of scores of its members held by Mr Abbass police in the West Bank,while Fatah insists on keeping control of foreign affairs,including peace dealings with Israel.

The influence of foreign governments has not helped reconciliation. Western ones,along with Arab allies such as Egypt,Saudi Arabia and Jordan,still prop up Mr Abbas and shun Hamas,arguing that it could win acceptability simply by giving up its declared aim of destroying Israel by armed struggle. The rejectionist frontIran,Syria and milder sympathisers such as Qatarhas done the opposite.

Israel,which clamped an 18-month siege on the territory following Hamass takeover,has opened the valves a notch to let in immediate aid,but signals that it will still impose stringent terms on the supply even of such goods as cement,which Israel says can be used to build rocket-launching sites. Egypt,whose rulers loathe Hamas as the Palestinian sibling of its own troublesome Muslim Brotherhood,and control the only other border with Gaza,still insists that it be sealed until Hamas lets the PA or international monitors take it over. Egypt has also pledged to ensure that hundreds of smuggling tunnels hit by bunker-busting Israeli bombs stay blocked. European and Arab donors,including Saudi Arabia,whose king has pledged $1 billion in aid to Gaza,say they will work through any party to deliver itexcept for Hamas.

The Islamist party is looking forward to a windfall of aid from its own backers,including Iran. Qatar has proffered $250m. Hamas,much like Hizbullah,the well-armed Shia movement in Lebanon after its war with Israel in 2006,is already upstaging slow-moving international donors by giving cash to needy Gazans. Hamas officials still demand a complete and unconditional opening of all access points into the territory,and say the most they will offer Israel is a limited hudna,or truce. There is no end to this, says Yusuf Ashrafi,a Hamas leader in Gaza. We are not just fighting for food to be brought in,but for al-Aqsa the mosque in Jerusalem that is Islams third-holiest site.

Can Hamas compromise?

Hamass claims of victory may strike many shell-shocked Gazans as otherworldly. Its leaders face a tough choice. They can settle for a controlled opening,perhaps under international inspection,that would hinder rearmament but relieve ordinary Gazans. Or they can keep trying to embarrass Egypt and to shoot at Israel,so as to keep the resistance alive.

A flurry of summit meetings followed the ceasefire on January 18th. While Qatar summoned Hamas figureheads and their backers,including Irans president,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,to hail the resistance and demand an end to peace overtures to Israel,Egypt and Saudi Arabia hosted counter-meetings to bolster Mr Abbas. At a later Arab summit that brought both lots together,a joint platform could not be agreed on,though King Abdullah,hoping to steer a middle course,declared that an Arab initiative to recognise Israel in exchange for its withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank,which all the Arabs signed in 2002,could not stay on the table for ever.

In the meantime,moves to consolidate the ceasefire continued. Egypt hosted separate delegations from Israel and Hamas in a sign that,despite the opprobrium it has earned from many Arabs by its support for the blockade,Egypt still monopolises most channels of communication.

On his first day in office,Barack Obama telephoned Mr Abbas as well as Israels Ehud Olmert. His reported selection as Middle East envoy of George Mitchell,a former senator of part-Lebanese descent with experience as a peacemaker in Northern Ireland,was generally well-received. But no one thinks that trying to make peace between Palestinians themselves,let alone among Palestinians and Israelis,will be anything but gut-wrenching.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008