MAHMOUD ABBAS, the Palestinian President promised his people jobs, new homes and freedom of movement yesterday as he vied with the militant group Hamas to take credit for Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

In his first speech since the withdrawal began, Mr Abbas said Palestinians were experiencing “historic days of joy” as they witnessed the settlers’ eviction. “The most important thing is how to build our country so that it will become a model of civilisation for the rest of the world,” he told a rapturous crowd of 700 who waved Palestinian flags and frequently interrupted with cheers.

Mr Abbas and his ruling Fatah movement are locked in a fierce struggle with Hamas for the Palestinian soul, and each is battling to reap capital from the forced removal of Jews by their own Government.

Hamas has been arguing that its attacks drove the Israelis from the Gaza Strip. Mr Abbas is focusing on the potential to improve the quality of life of a territory devastated by conflict and poverty after the Israelis have left. Parliamentary elections are looming in January.

The Palestinian leader was speaking at Gaza’s defunct international airport, whose runways were destroyed by Israel at the outbreak of fighting in 2000. Surrounded by black-clad paramilitary bodyguards, he promised the airport would soon resume operation even though agreement with Israel on security procedures has proved elusive. “Today we are visitors. Tomorrow we will be travellers,” he declared.

Mr Abbas said the Palestinian Authority would rebuild all the homes demolished by Israel during the past five years of conflict. The Palestinian leader also promised that 5 per cent of government jobs would go to the handicapped, many of whom were wounded in fighting with Israel.

But a leading Palestinian analyst and economic adviser, Salah Abdel Shafi, questioned the wisdom of asserting that the return of the Gaza land would inevitably lead to revival. To suggest, as Mr Abbas has done, that the Gaza pull-out would be followed by Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank was also dangerous.

Hamas’s more pragmatic tone leaves no such hostages to fortune. It maintains that its violent resistance drove Mr Sharon to abandon Gaza’s Jewish settlements.

The green banners and posters with which it has festooned Gaza city argue that negotiations with Israel brought nothing. “Four years of resistance defeated ten years of negotiations,” they proclaim.

A less subtle poster depicts a masked Hamas gunman standing on the crushed remains of the distinctive red-roofed settlement houses as broken Israeli soldiers and ultra-Orthodox Jews trudge off wearily.

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