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 front—Iran, Syria and milder sympathisers such as Qatar—has done the opposite.

Israel, which clamped an 18-month siege on the territory following Hamas’s 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 it—except 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 Islam’s third-holiest site].”

... contd.