Under Pressure, Palestinian Territories Pull Apart

Intent to Divide

Since leaving Gaza, Israel has maintained control over the crossings into Israel, the strip's airspace and coastal waters, and the population registry used to assign Palestinian identity cards and travel documents. The West Bank remains a closed military zone, which Gaza residents have been denied permission to enter since Hamas's election.

West Bank residents must also secure permission to visit Gaza, which Israel is no longer granting. They can enter Gaza through Egypt, but Israeli officials say only several hundred West Bank residents visit Gaza each year, down from the thousands who once did.

Palestinian officials say the growing separation is designed to prevent an economically sustainable state from emerging in Gaza and the West Bank.

"This is clearly Israel's intent," said Mohammed Dahlan, a powerful Fatah lawmaker from Gaza who has negotiated with Israel over the years. "It's not just a question of besieging Gaza, but of separating it from the rest of the world."

During factional fighting over the past year that killed more than 100 Palestinians in Gaza, Dahlan rallied his armed supporters against Hamas's militia, making clear that his goal was to challenge the Islamic movement for control of the strip. But the better-trained Hamas gunmen beat Fatah's more numerous ones, in the assessment of Israeli security officials and the Islamic movement.

"We are able to say that Fatah's effort to erode our government has ended," said Mushir al-Masri, 30, a Hamas lawmaker from northern Gaza.

Gaza has emerged as the seat of Palestinian political authority since the victory of Hamas. During its nearly one year in power, the movement has imprinted its uncompromising vision of Islam on the government at a time when foreign donors, who cut off aid following its election, are demanding that it renounce its founding charter and recognize Israel.

Dahlan, who wields great influence in the Fatah-controlled security services he helped build more than a decade ago, has been recruiting, training and arming fresh forces since the two parties agreed last month in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to stop fighting and form a power-sharing government.

"Hamas is living as if Gaza is the most important geographical unit in Palestine -- its own kingdom of Gaza," said Dahlan, 45, who grew up in the central Gaza city of Khan Younis. "To me, the West Bank and Gaza are the two lungs of Palestine. We cannot live without one of them."

Apart from some reprisal kidnappings and vandalism by Fatah in the West Bank, the factional fighting has remained rooted in Gaza. Israeli security officials say Hamas's battlefield strength gave it the upper hand in the Mecca negotiations. Although it ceded control of some important ministries, the Islamic movement has refused to soften its stance toward Israel, as Fatah officials have demanded.

"The Israelis are trying to create a split reality on the ground," said Ahmed Bahar, 58, a Hamas founder who is now the deputy speaker of parliament.

On the walls of Bahar's office hang posters of Aziz Duwaik, the Hamas speaker of the Palestinian parliament who is one of 38 West Bank lawmakers in Israeli prisons. Nearly all of them are Hamas members, arrested for belonging to an illegal organization, and their imprisonment has concentrated power in the hands of their Gaza counterparts.