The kidnapping of Kate Burton, a young human rights worker, and her parents by gunmen in Gaza is alarming. Nothing has been heard of the three Britons since they were abducted in the southern border town of Rafah on Wednesday. Despite an intensive search, roadblocks and appeals by Palestinian leaders, there has been no claim or responsibility or any word from the kidnappers. Their abduction, the latest in a rash of hostage-taking by men demanding jobs or the release of political prisoners as ransom, appears to follow a different pattern, and raises disturbing questions. Have foreigners become pawns in the power struggle between competing Palestin-ian factions? Has al-Qaeda gained a foothold in Gaza and begun to target Westerners there as well as in Iraq? Has Gaza descended into lawlessness since the evacuation of Israeli settlers?

Since the Israelis left in September, the turmoil in Gaza has grown. Partly this is the result of bitter competition for power and influence between Islamist factions, especially Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority. Partly it is because the air attacks by Israel in retaliation for the rocket attacks on its territory from border areas have galvanised militants and endangered the precarious ceasefire. And, most importantly, the coming elections in both Israel and the Palestinian territories have hardened positions on all sides.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, is under pressure from every quarter and floundering. Israel is demanding tougher action to stop the rocket attacks, but his appeals to militants have fallen on deaf ears. His own Fatah faction is losing influence to Hamas, which has decided to contest the elections next month, confident of widespread support among the teeming slums of Gaza. More than a dozen foreigners, mostly journalists and aid workers, have been kidnapped in recent weeks, but the Palestinian Authority’s swift acceding to the abductors’ demands has only increased such actions. And security sources now suggest that Ms Burton was seized by an armed offshoot of the ruling Fatah movement. Until now, there has been little animosity among Palestinians against Western aid workers, many of them sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, who play an important role in developing the social infrastructure in the depressed and crowded Gaza Strip. But Islamist extremism is growing, as elsewhere in the Arab world, and with it a strongly anti-Western outlook. Only last week the Foreign and Commonwealth Office warned Britons not to travel to Gaza. If the overall security situation becomes as dangerous to Westerners as it is in Iraq, the task of making Gaza and the Palestinian territories a viable state looks almost insuperable.

The evidence of a breakdown in law and order is growing. Police exchanged fire yesterday with gunmen outside Mr Abbas’s residence; elsewhere a policemen and civilian were killed in a shootout between rival families. Optimism has drained fast in the three months since the Israeli withdrawal. Unless security improves, neither the elections in January nor those in Israel later will offer new hope for Gaza.