John Rapley

It's about the worst possible thing that could happen to the Palestinians. Foreign occupation is bad, statelessness worse. But having your own leaders fight over the dwindling spoils of an impoverished land makes your nation's cause look about as close to hopelessness as it can get.

Mindful of this, the two principal factions of Palestinian politics met at a summit in Saudi Arabia last week to try and patch up their differences. On the face of it, the negotiations succeeded. The leaders of Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a national unity government and end their internecine violence.

The fault-line running through Palestinian politics is grave. On one side stands Fatah, the nationalist movement that has dominated the Palestinian cause for most of its history. On the other stands Hamas, an Islamist organisation that sees the struggle against Israel not only as one between two nations, but also as part of a deeper struggle between Islam and evil.

Christian minority

This view is anathema to Palestinian nationalists. If most Palestinians are Muslims, there is nonetheless a large and significant Christian minority, not to mention a good many secular Palestinians. Their overriding identity has been their common bond in their language, land and shared history. And for much of that history, that nationalism rallied the great majority of Palestinians to the Fatah cause.

From the early 1980s, though, an Islamist opposition began to form. In part, it rose with the tide of Islamism then washing across the Arab world. But Hamas' early success also owed something to regional politics. In the territories Israel had occupied in earlier wars, the Israeli government tacitly condoned the development of an Islamist opposition, believing it a potential counterweight to Fatah's power.

Israel may have been Frankenstein to the monster it helped create. Hamas' popularity only rose with time. After the Oslo Accords created the embryonic Palestinian state in the 1990s, Fatah struggled to make the transition from rebel movement to government.

Corruption and ineptitude were rife. Arguably, only Yasser Arafat's popularity kept most Palestinians on the side of Fatah.

Lingering contentment

After Arafat's death, Fatah itself began to splinter. Then last year, Hamas won parliamentary elections, in the process earning itself the right to form the next government. Suddenly confronted with a Palestinian government even more hostile to it than Fatah's had been, Israel lost any lingering contentment it might have once felt at Islamism's rise.

Israel froze the transfer of tax revenues it collected for the Palestinian authority, and successfully persuaded the international community to cut aid to the Palestinian government. Hamas refuses to recognise Israel's right to exist, and it supports continued violence against Israel. While this has won it many admirers among suffering Palestinians, it has only hardened international opinion against Hamas.

Needless to say, the Palestinian economy has all but collapsed. Social conditions worsen daily. Discontent within Fatah ranks has risen. Because he was chosen in a separate election, the Palestinian president is a Fatah man. Moreover, he controls several security forces. Elements in these forces are pressing for a military approach to frustrate a government they scarcely consider legitimate: Given the Palestinian electoral system.

For now, peace has returned. But because the agreement reached does not satisfy Israeli demands - including Israel's right to exist - the Palestinian government may remain isolated. In that case, conditions will continue worsening. A return to weapons then seems just a matter of time.