HAMAS said last night that it was confident of raising money from the Arabic and Islamic world to replace millions of dollars withheld by Israel after its Palestinian election victory.

The armed Islamic group has sent a delegation to Arab countries amid claims that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have promised $33 million (£19 million) to fix the Palestinian Authority’s impending budget crisis. Ministers have said that the authority will cease to operate within days if it cannot pay 140,000 government workers.

Defiant over Western threats to cut off more funds, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas leader, has spoken of disengaging from Israel economically and filling the gap by “opening the doors to Arab and Muslim countries”.

Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s head of intelligence, has said that if the West cuts off Hamas, “Iran will give them the money”. A Hamas delegation crossed into Egypt on Wednesday and was to hold talks in Cairo, as it began a tour of the Arab world.

Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas spokesman, said: “I think if the international position continues as unyielding there will always be an alternative through controlling our resources and resorting to our Arabic and Islamic strategic depths. Many of the leaders and the prime ministers and princes and investors have made calls and confirmed that they will stand by the Palestinian people.”

Others are sceptical. “Only one tenth of the money pledged by the Arab world is collected, despite numerous trips by authority officials around the region over the years,” Diana Buttu, a former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, said.

Robert Lawrence, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, said that although Dr al-Zahar’s “look East” policy would open Gaza to cheaper suppliers in Asia, there would be huge problems. “The first would be severing the connection with Israel, which would have a lot of ramifications because there are many linkages, and building new ones would be difficult and take a long time,” he said.

“Maybe what you gain in reducing corruption is sufficient to offset this radical image that is out there, but anyone who looks at putting their money into that area is going to want political stability. You would have to be nuts to do it right now.”

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