Sixteen months ago Hamas transformed the political landscape of the Middle East by emerging as the dominant force in the Palestinian parliamentary elections. It then had an opportunity, in principle, to end its defining refusal to recognise Israel and represent the Palestinians in peace talks. Only the most deluded optimists believed it would happen, but even the most hardened realists have reason to be dismayed at how events since have actually transpired.

Not only does Hamas still call for the destruction of Israel in its rhetoric; it has torn up the powersharing agreement that was brokered in Mecca with Fatah four months ago, ignored successive Egyptian-sponsored ceasefires, and allowed its military wing to rampage through Gaza with the apparent intention of taking full control of the overcrowded territory by force.

At least 60 people have been killed in four days of fighting, while Hamas continues to build makeshift rockets and target them at Israel. The upshot is the prospect of even tighter Israeli control of Gaza’s borders than currently exists, and paralysis for efforts to resume negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas in control of Gaza would be “significant”, the Israeli Foreign Minister has said, with breath-taking understatement. The truth is that the outlook for those committed to a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict has seldom been bleaker. Yet it is not entirely hopeless.

Even within Gaza City, the Hamas powerbase, several hundred moderates found the courage to take to the streets yesterday not under a sectarian banner but to demand a halt to the killing. In the West Bank and Israel, moderates are more numerous. Solid majorities in both Arab and Jewish communities express a desire for a new accommodation aimed at preventing the spread of the violence outside Gaza’s borders, and, if possible, restoring a semblance of normality to contested West Bank districts. It is a desire to which Ehud Olmert, Mahmoud Abbas and the international community must respond.

Blockade drains life from Gaza

The movement of goods into Gaza had been intermittent at best since Hamas won Palestinian elections early last year

Multimedia

• Pictures: Johnston is released

• Video: unarmed protester confronts gunman in Gaza

• Pictures: life in Gaza

BACKGROUND

• Israel continues Gaza blitz as 310 dead

• Q&A: Hamas and Gaza

• 97 days and counting for BBC's man in Gaza

• Now war is with the enemy within

• The little girl trapped by a quirk of war

Israel has an absolute right to take whatever action is necessary to ensure its security. The 456-mile barrier being built to keep its own and Palestinian communities apart has played a major role in denying terrorists access to Israeli targets. Yet it is unarguable that the more the West Bank’s Palestinian towns and villages are isolated from each other and Jerusalem, the more drastically their opportunities for economic activity are curtailed. Now that Gaza is a no-go zone, it makes sense to support the moderates in the West Bank and show that a Palestinian state is viable.

Hamas is not the dominant Palestinian voice in the West Bank that it is in Gaza. It exists there, rather, as Fatah’s junior and destructive rival, bent on preventing any deal between Mr Abbas and the weakened Israeli Government. Its wrecking instincts cannot be allowed to prevail. The wider world can assist by urging Mr Abbas to clean up his bureaucracy and persuading Mr Olmert to release, in response, more of the $700 million in Palestinian tax receipts that Israel has withheld since Hamas’s election victory. It is to be hoped that Gaza’s moderates may eventually see the benefits of such cooperation in the West Bank, and seek to follow suit. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are the losers.