Gaza in conflict

The Fatah/Hamas split - a brutal little war exacerbated by US-trained Fatah troops committing human rights abuses against the democratically elected Hamas government - is regularly discussed. The vast majority of people I talked to wanted the moderates in both parties to reconcile. Division is death in Palestine and simply makes it easier for Israel and Washington to claim there is no partner for peace.

Dr Haider Eid, an academic and activist for the one-state solution in Israel-Palestine, despaired that Hamas was already talking about accepting the parameters of a two-state equation, like the previously failed Fatah endeavors. "Hamas has to choose between resistance and leadership," he said, "so this is now a moment of truth for the movement." Dr Ahmed Yousef, Hamas deputy foreign minister and former adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, was the epitome of moderation when we met. He talked about accepting a state within the 1967 borders, though he warned Israel that "resistance" would continue if colonisation in the occupied territories continued, which he acknowledged was likely.

The sight of Hamas security forces on the streets was surprisingly unthreatening. Virtually every street or major intersection saw armed men in uniforms (seized, along with their cars, when Hamas overthrew Fatah in 2007). My fixer, a Fatah man, cursed the Hamas men whenever we drove past, and we heard almost daily of deadly gun battles between the two sides. It was a division that militants I interviewed said was unlikely to be fully resolved any time soon.

Haniyeh doesn't give media interviews anymore and has rarely been seen in public since the war, though I was able to attend the Friday prayers in Khan Yunis that he was leading. The security around him was immense - large, well-armed men with beards and steely eyes. The audience lapped up Haniyeh's presence. Like Barack Obama, Haniyeh is an orator of striking proportions. His words rose and fell in a hypnotic rhythm. (I was later told he spoke of accepting a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders if it included East Jerusalem as the capital and the right of the refugees to return.) The mosque's fans blew on the masses below as they listened intently. Men of all ages rocked from side to side as Haniyeh delivered his speech.

As Haniyeh left, there was a surge behind me, and I was almost swept under a sea of people. The security forces were clearing the area for the leader, pushing and slapping anybody in their way. One man cried out Arabic words of support, and the crowd shouted its response in unison. We were pushed and pulled as Haniyeh, after briefly stopping and raising his hands to acknowledge the salute, exited the building.

A few hours later Haniyeh attended one of Hamas's first public rallies since January. An outdoor sports ground in Khan Yunis was the setting. Hundreds of armed Hamas security forces surrounded the venue, positioning themselves on adjacent rooftops and surveying the crowd, mostly men in traditional thobes. Hamas flags waved from every flagpole, and posters of assassinated Hamas leaders Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi hung behind the raised stage. The large speakers blared music, warming up the crowd. When Haniyeh appeared, he mounted the platform, waved to his followers, sat down and began to speak. I thought how easy it would have been for Israel to bomb the event and take out many levels of the Hamas leadership at once. My fixer told me that Fatah was far more eager to do that than the Israelis.

Gaza is unlike anywhere on earth. I regularly sat near the beach overlooking the ocean, sipping a cool fruit drink. The stylishly appointed bar at the hotel where I was staying could easily have been at some fancy resort elsewhere in the Mediterranean. It was designed for a tourist industry that no longer comes and an elite that now thrives on property ownership and the tunnel-smuggling industry. Just outside the hotel, however, stand an ever-increasing number of beggars amid rubbish-strewn streets, not far from the destroyed parliament building.

Many Gazans think the world, including the Arab states, has forgotten them. Egypt's role in maintaining the siege was constantly damned by the people I talked to. Israeli behavior, while terrible and universally condemned, was better understood than that of their Arab neighbour. People expressed fear of Iran despite its public support for Hamas. The Islamic Republic's strict clerical rule simply does not appeal to Gazans, who need more than rhetorical support. The world community has yet to deliver.