A Hamas political bureau delegation was in Iran this week for meetings with top officials, including the Islamic Republic's chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili, as the two sides looked to cement their alliance.

The authorities in Gaza appear at pains to prevent cross-border strikes and clashes as the movement engages with Israel in indirect talks on a prisoner swap.

Negotiations over the prisoner deal, which are being conducted with Egyptian and German mediation, have proved tortuous.

The prisoner lists submitted by Hamas have reportedly included the likely future leader of Fatah, Marwan Barghouti, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat.

The Israeli government seems wary of further damaging the standing of PA President Mahmoud Abbas through including both men in the swap, but may agree to the same in time, particularly if fraught relations with the PA do not improve.

"Hamas wants to show that, although they have reached an undeclared hudna [truce] with the Israelis […] that without kidnapping Israeli prisoners there will not be any solution for Palestinian prisoners," Akram Atallah, head of the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies, told ISN Security Watch.

For Hamas, the clear prioritization of the prisoner talks over stalled reconciliation negotiations with Fatah confirms both the lack of perceived urgency of the latter and the significance of a prisoner exchange in the battle for political support between the factions.

Hamas and the Salafis

The relationship of Hamas to small, radical Salafi groups in the Gaza Strip has been a subject of intense speculation. Hamas security forces moved to crush one such group, Jund Ansar Allah, in fighting in the southern Strip in August.

"Hamas did, in the past, assist in the formation and the nourishment of all these kinds of groups but now they are about to get out of hand," Basem Ezbidi, political science professor from Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, told ISN Security Watch.

Jund Ansar Allah had openly accused Hamas of failing to properly institute Sharia and moved to declare an Islamic emirate just prior to the Hamas attack. "Twenty-four people were killed and 85 injured and a lot of people were affected," Atallah noted. 

He argued that the fighting served a dual purpose for Hamas, sending a clear signal that the movement is in control of Gaza and will brook no challengers, and a message to Europe and the US of its openness to dialogue.

The head of the Gaza government, Ismail Haniyeh, made a further effort to differentiate Hamas from radical groups at a rally on Monday, saying: "We are not striving to form an Islamic emirate in the Strip."

Institutionalization

The mixed signals sent by both the Gaza leadership and Damascus-based political bureau regarding armed resistance and the movement's willingness to accept the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the pre-June 1967 borders, make it difficult to pin down set Hamas positions.

This problem is compounded by the lack of a clear political platform and by the institutionalization of elements of the movement in recent years. The latter has come through the decision to enter the Palestinian political arena and post-June 2007 elaboration of Hamas' institutional, security and governance framework in the Gaza Strip.

It is important to note that the undeclared truce, mentioned above, followed the direct Israeli targeting of Hamas civil institutions in last winter's offensive.

Hamas has "managed to develop a very pragmatic and actually very realistic approach during the last 10 years or so," Ezbidi said.

"They are not injecting a great deal of religiosity in their policies. They are doing things like any other political animal […] they do not really operate based on ideology at this point," he said.
 
Mediation grind

Mutual security crackdowns in the West Bank and Gaza have further poisoned relations between Hamas and Fatah as Egyptian efforts to promote a reconciliation agreement falter.

An unnamed Hamas official told Ma'an news agency recently that his movement was adhering to its insistence that last minute "notes" Cairo sought to append to the recently proffered reconciliation agreement be removed before Hamas reentered the dialogue.

Cairo's leadership of the reconciliation process puts Hamas at a distinct disadvantage given Egypt's opposition to the movement's seizure of Gaza and Hamas' historical and extant ties to the most significant threat to their interlocutor, Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.

Vested interests

Both Fatah and Hamas have made significant mistakes as popular fears grow that the sundering of the Gaza Strip from the PA is already assuming a sense of permanence, fundamentally undermining prospects for a Palestinian state.

The significant political cachet won by Fatah through its successful congress earlier this year has been undermined by Abbas' botched handling of the Goldstone report and by his failure to win US backing for a complete Israeli settlement freeze.

Hamas' popular support in Gaza has also likely been dented by the missteps that led to the devastating Israeli military operation, and by the involvement of Hamas members as middlemen in a massive Ponzi scheme, in which thousands lost their investments.

For both factions, a return to power sharing is undermined by the potential impact on foreign funding - should Hamas not meet Quartet conditions - and by the attendant need to fold parallel institutional and security structures into each other.

This would necessitate the collapse of established spheres of control and influence and lead to a factional contest for positions from the bottom to the top of the reworked quasi-state structure.

Atallah agrees that while a factional deal may provide Hamas with integration into the PLO and greater acceptance with Arab states, "there are a lot of people who don't want reconciliation because some have new power centers […] And this will be the same for Fatah."
 
To Ezbidi, the roadblocks in the path of reconciliation are two-fold:

Hamas "is not really eager to surrender a very important card in their hand, Gaza" and the PA (Fatah) "is not really willing to acknowledge Hamas' legitimacy and presence on the Palestinian political scene."

**Dr Dominic Moran, based in Tel Aviv, is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent in the Middle East and the Director of Operations of ISA Consulting.