AS AN array of diplomats intensify their efforts to consolidate the ceasefire that took hold in the Gaza Strip after January 18th, the battered territory’s 1.5m people were still gasping for desperately-needed help. Gazans are terrified that violence might return, as tit-for-tat attacks resumed at a relatively low but still dangerous level. Most Gazans now rely on food handouts to survive. Meanwhile, representatives of Israel, various Palestinian factions and the European Union, as well as America’s new peace envoy, George Mitchell, converged on Egypt’s capital, Cairo, to hash out the terms of a more lasting peace.

The talks covered not only the securing of a formal ceasefire and getting immediate humanitarian aid into the stricken territory, but a range of other tricky issues. These included longer-term arrangements for Gaza’s border crossings, the fate of a kidnapped Israeli soldier held by Hamas and of thousands of Palestinians held by Israel, and a power-sharing deal between Hamas and its rivals. If Hamas were bound into a broader Palestinian government, outsiders could help the Palestinians while still not dealing directly with the Islamist group, which has preserved de facto control of Gaza despite the ferocity of Israel’s three-week assault.

Neither Israel nor Hamas wants the fighting to resume. Both have signalled that they would accept a year-long ceasefire; Hamas has privately hinted at 18 months. Egypt suggested February 5th as a starting date. Hamas has also said it could accept international observers inside Gaza’s borders to monitor the ceasefire. The Islamist party, which seized control of the territory from the Palestinian Authority (PA) run by the rival Fatah group in 2007, insists that the borders must be fully opened to trade. But Israel, which has blockaded Gaza since Hamas took over, is determined to maintain strict inspections in any circumstance. Israel is still, for instance, blocking shipments of cement and reinforced steel for building, on the ground that they may serve military purposes.

Despite the pressure for calm, Israeli aircraft came back to bomb the smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border on the night of January 27th, putting hundreds of Gazans to flight yet again. That wave of attacks, said Israel, was in reprisal for a bomb that hit an Israeli patrol on the Gaza-Israel border, killing a soldier. Hamas, which denied responsibility for that blast, then responded by launching a rocket, which landed harmlessly in Israel.

The border bomb was probably laid by a small group, World Jihad. But Israel said it held Hamas responsible. The country’s three main leaders, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, respectively prime minister, foreign minister and defence minister, all insisted publicly that drastic retaliation was needed to bolster the deterrence they claim to have re-established as a result of the Gaza campaign.

The new envoy’s priorities

In any event, Israel’s ministers were plainly anxious to complete that round of reprisals just before Mr Mitchell landed in Israel. He was expected first to focus on bolstering the ceasefire, channelling reconstruction aid through the Fatah-run PA rather than Hamas, and on measures to stop arms reaching Gaza via tunnels under the border with Egypt or by sea from Iran.

To this end, the Americans and Danes were planning a conference in Copenhagen in early February. France, Germany and other European governments could join a naval force, perhaps under NATO’s aegis, to patrol the sea off Gaza. Egypt, nervous that foreign troops on its side of the Gaza border might undermine its sovereignty in the Sinai desert, will probably also attend the meeting in Denmark. Israelis say they are gratified by how seriously foreign governments, especially America’s new one, are taking the challenge of stopping Hamas from rearming with rockets.

In a marked change of tone, Israeli officials have also praised Egypt for its stern attitude to Hamas and for its efforts to stop the smuggling, despite the bile poured on the Egyptians by Hamas’s many admirers. So Israel may drop its objection to Egypt’s long-standing demand to increase the size of its border force, which is limited by a mutual treaty. While Egypt has found it hard to block the tunnels, it has kept its official border with Gaza sealed to all but a trickle of humanitarian traffic, saying that the crossing’s Palestinian side should be controlled by a proper government body, such as the PA, but not by Hamas.

Israel still wants to link a full reopening of the crossings to the release of its kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. Hamas so far rejects such a link, insisting on a separate prisoner swap. But Israel’s rulers, challenged by rivals on the right, would find it hard to give ground on this sensitive issue in the run-up to a general election on February 10th. France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, summoned Corporal Shalit’s father to Paris to reassure him that his son, a dual French-Israeli citizen, was still alive.

If the fighting has bolstered Israel’s right, the Palestinian factions aligned with Hamas also think it has boosted them. So they are sure to drive a hard bargain with Fatah as efforts to create a national unity government get going. Egyptian mediators want formal Fatah-Hamas reconciliation talks to start on February 22nd, but do not expect elections that would let the Palestinian people decide who they want to run their affairs to be held before next year. Yet without a unified Palestinian front it will be hard, if not impossible, for Israel to negotiate a peace that might endure.