The new fissures in the Palestinian ranks do not threaten to setback only the quest for peace in Palestine but also the process of Palestinian reconciliation.

The leadership of Hamas, the movement which is in control of the Gaza Strip, is split between those in favour of a negotiated once-for-all peace settlement with Israel, leading to a two-state solution, and those who are not willing to accept the 1967 front lines as the basis for an agreement.

However, the real issue here is the February 6 agreement signed by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Mishaal, calling for Abbas to become prime minister of an interim Palestinian government that will prepare the ground for legislative elections in May. The accord advances the agreement that was signed in Cairo in May by Fateh and Hamas.

Israel has been warning that it will have nothing to do with a Palestinian government — effectively the Palestinian Authority (PA) based in Ramallah, West Bank — that would result from a Fateh-Hamas reconciliation. It calls Hamas a “terrorist” organisation supported by Iran and dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Israeli officials say the Hamas charter states that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it”. Hamas believes that its argument against making peace with Israel on the basis of the two-state solution is the best answer to Israel’s rejection of the 1967 lines as the starting point for peace negotiations.

In the meantime, the internal Palestinian differences are worsening.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation, an alliance of eight groups leading the Palestinian struggle for independence, has seen splits within its component factions. Then the Islamist Hamas movement emerged in the Gaza Strip and contributed to the start of the first Intifada that began in late 1987. The relationship between Hamas and the Fateh-dominated PLO was at best uneasy because the former saw the latter as a Western lackey. The distrust came to a head-on clash in the mid-2000s and Hamas chased Fateh out of the strip and seized the territory.

Since then, the international Quartet of Middle East peace mediators — comprising the US, the European Union, Russia and the UN — has said that Hamas has to renounce armed struggle, recognise Israel’s right to exist and accept agreements signed by Palestinians and Israelis if it is to be accepted as a partner in the quest for peace.

Hamas has not accepted these conditions and it does not look likely that it will ever do so, particularly in view of its control of the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas seizure of the territory in 2007 saw what was nominally a collective Palestinian leadership being split and depriving Abbas of support for his effort for a negotiated settlement with Israel, whose leaders told him he would have to choose between “peace” and Hamas.

Inter-Palestinian differences need to be settled if they hope for an agreement with Israel.

The quest for Palestinian reconciliation was given a new start with the signing of the Cairo agreement of 2011 and the Doha agreement of 2012. Then came another blow, with the split within Hamas between the Mishaal camp and the movement’s Gaza-based leaders. That puts yet another hurdle for the efforts for peace.

Now the Hamas leaders have to reconcile with each other before Hamas-Fateh reconciliation. It seems to be a tough endeavour, given that the Hamas leaders based in Gaza see the Doha agreement as an existential threat since they would have to give up power and see the proposed interim government taking their place in the coastal enclave.

During the signing of the Doha agreement Mishaal said that it would create greater Palestinian unity “in order to be free for confronting” Israel. But the Gaza-based Hamas leaders saw Palestinian unity as a disguise word for the decline of their power. Some of them are determined not to let go of their control of the Gaza Strip, which they see as the best strategic option under the circumstances.

Therefore, questions have been raised over the chances of reconciliation between the two Hamas camps. And that means another serious blow for the sought-for broader Palestinian reconciliation.