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“Our play does not mean we hate Israel,” said Abdel Qader Ismail, 24, a former employee of the military intelligence service, with no trace of irony. “We believe in Israel’s right to exist, but not on the land of Palestine. In France or in Russia, but not in Palestine. This is our home.”

So if the present policy has failed utterly — even backfired by possibly bolstering Hamas — let’s start over. It’s time not just to ease the siege of Gaza, but to end it once and for all.

Originally, Israel hoped the closure would put enough pressure on the local economy that Gazans would grow frustrated and oust Hamas. But the group's hold on power remains firm. Israel has tried to use the closure as a bargaining chip in negotiations for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, to no avail.

In a related development on Tuesday, two Israeli groups that advocate for Palestinians, HaMoked and Gisha, revealed a new Israeli procedure that makes it impossible for Gaza residents to move to the West Bank in all but the most exceptional of cases. For example, the groups said, under the policy, chronically ill patients, orphans and elderly invalids will not be able to receive care from their closest relatives living in the West Bank if they have any relatives in Gaza capable of caring for them.

So far, the United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, has not publicly pushed Israel to allow reconstruction to proceed. Arab states, which generally support the Palestinian Authority that controls the West Bank and is a rival to Hamas, have also remained relatively mute. Egypt's border with Gaza is closed, and while the smuggling of food and other supplies is rampant, officials in Cairo have tightened policing in recent months to curb arms shipments.

Apart from the time restriction and the refusal to accept Israel’s existence, Mr. Meshal’s terms approximate the Arab League peace plan and what the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas says it is seeking. Israel rejects a full return to the 1967 borders, as well as a Palestinian right of return to Israel itself.

The 1988 Hamas Charter is vile, but I think it’s wrong to get hung up on the prior recognition of Israel issue. Perhaps Hamas is sincere in its calls for Israel’s disappearance — although it has offered a decades-long truce — but then it’s also possible that Israel in reality has no desire to see a Palestinian state.

"Iran is not giving us any weapons," said Abu Osama Abdolmoti, the permanent Hamas representative in Iran, during a recent interview in his uptown Tehran office. "But I look forward to the day when weapons from Iran, Syria, Egypt and all Muslim friendly countries can be openly given to Gaza -- just like Israel is openly getting weapons from the United States and Europe."

First of all, Hamas is not an arm of Iran. Hamas entered the elections as a political party. If the whole world had given them the chance of becoming a political player, maybe they would not be in a situation like this after the elections that they won. The world has not respected the political will of the Palestinian people. On the one hand, we defend democracy and we try our best to keep democracy in the Middle East, but on the other hand we do not respect the outcome of . . . the ballot box. Palestine today is an open-air prison. Hamas, as much as they tried, could not change the situation. Just imagine, you imprison the speaker of a country as well as some ministers of its government and members of its parliament. And then you expect them to sit obediently?

Israelis - who have been negotiating with Fatah - have vehemently opposed a unity government that would give Hamas more legitimacy. But this week, the European Union endorsed the idea this week as a means of rebuilding war-torn Gaza and ending the political isolation of the people there.