If the coming year will witness the birth of the state of Palestine, we need to see from now what kind of state it will be. Programs that can give concrete answers to this question will undoubtedly do better than generalities.

With parliamentary and presidential elections indefinitely postponed, this will be the only measure of the attitude of the Palestinians towards the Abbas-Fayyad policies.

It remains to be seen whether the elections will take place on time or, if they do, whether they will be held in Gaza as well as the West Bank.

As long as Fatah had leaders in various Arab countries, they were susceptible to pressures from those hosts. That has all but disappeared with the majority of its leadership now based inside Palestine.

Fateh, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, will meet next week in an atmosphere mired with internal divisions, charges of corruption, and tales of espionage and betrayal fit for a John Le Carré novel.

For the first time since the Hamas takeover in June 2007, Palestinian national unity talks have a better chance of success than in previous times, and the Gaza situation is probably the reason.