Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his rival Khalid Meshaal, the head of Islamic resistance movement Hamas, yesterday pointedly failed to overcome the deep and bitter rivalry that continues to divide their people.

Mr Meshaal, who lives in exile in Damascus, and Mr Abbas, in town for talks with the Syrian president, Bashar Assad, might have found themselves in the same city but they could not agree to sit in the same room, much less hold face-to-face discussions.

Hamas and allied Palestinian groups Islamic Jihad, Fatah Uprising and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PLFP-GC) were boycotting Mr Abbas’s visit, according to a senior Palestinian organiser with close ties to the groups’ leaders.

Both Fatah, led by Mr Abbas who also heads the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), and Hamas officially remained tight-lipped about the visit, in part to prevent their conflict breaking out into the open in Syria, a country with good ties to both movements and which has been involved with mediation efforts designed to form a Palestinian unity government.

The two main Palestinian political groups have been in a state of de facto civil war – often with outbreaks of internecine violence – since Hamas’s 2006 election victory, which ended years of Fatah’s monopoly over power.

That victory soon led to fighting between the newly elected officials and the Fatah dominated security services, loyal to Mr Abbas. The dispute came to a head in the summer of 2007 when Hamas forcibly seized full control of the Gaza Strip while the West Bank remained in Fatah hands.

While the geographical divide is impossible to ignore, it is not as stark as the political chasm separating the groups. Hamas is supported by Syria and Iran, and considered a terrorist organisation by the US and Europe because it refuses to recognise Israel or renounce violence as a way of freeing occupied Palestinian territory.

Mr Abbas, who cancelled elections scheduled to take place in January and instead unilaterally extended his own term of presidency after it expired, is supported by the West, which considers him more moderate and more likely to strike a peace deal with Israel.

Since the the end of the Gaza War at the start of the year, Egypt has hosted and acted as mediator in four rounds of talks between Fatah and Hamas largely without result. The next round is supposed to begin in Cairo tomorrow but there seems little prospect that a deal will be reached.

Fatah has indicated it is prepared to form a new government that excludes Hamas. Such an authority would not be recognised by the Islamic resistance movement, which has said it would in turn form its own administration in the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-Fatah dispute did boil to the surface in Damascus yesterday, in small, controlled ways. The Right to Return lobby group staged a demonstration outside of the PLO’s offices in the city centre and delivered an openly anti-Abbas message to gathered journalists.

“We insist that Mahmoud Abbas does not represent the Palestinian people, and we reject the peace process and political deals being done by him in our name,” said Tareq Hammoud, secretary general of the Right to Return organisation, who is Meshaal’s son-in-law.

“The Palestinian refugees in Syria also reject the idea of political representation without involving the Palestinian people in the decision-making progress,” he said. “That means the way we select our representatives should be through democratic means. Our national government should be chosen on the basis of fair elections.”

Other manifestations of the Fatah-Hamas divide were more personal and, perhaps for that reason, more indicative of just how much inter-Palestinian relations have degenerated.

In Yarmouk, the sprawling Palestinian refugee camp that has become a suburb of Damascus, supporters of the two rival factions spoke scathingly of one another.

“Hamas dragged the Palestinian people into the Gaza War that it wanted to use for its own benefit, so that it could claim some kind of victory over Israel and use that to improve its own political position. ‘We won the war, we should establish the government’,” said Mahmoud Abdul Rahman, a 46-year-old social worker and Fatah activist.

“As Palestinian people we cannot be hungry, without money, without electricity just because Hamas wants to have two or three ministers in the government. Hamas always insists on that and the Americans and Europeans will be angry and will refuse to deal with us all.

“We need Hamas to truly behave in the national interest and to say, ‘we will stay outside of the government’. That will make it easier to rebuild Gaza, help the Palestinian people and to improve things in the West Bank.”

Mr Rahman insisted that, faced with a right-wing Israeli prime minister in Benjamin Netanyahu, now was the time for the Palestinians to show moderation.

“With a radical Israeli government, we can convince the world that we are the ones who truly want peace,” he said. “Hamas will only undermine us.”

From his house nearby, also in Yarmouk, Abdul Khader Hussein, a 53-year-old primary schoolteacher and Hamas supporter, accused Fatah and Mr Abbas of destroying Palestinian democracy and ignoring the will of the people.

“We [Hamas] won a majority in the parliament according to fair elections and we want to have our rightful share in the government,” he said. “How can you have a national unity government without Hamas? It will mean you have a government that does not represent the people who voted. If we do exclude Hamas just to satisfy the Americans or Israel, we are undermining our own democracy.

“Fatah doesn’t want to share positions with Hamas. The two groups should sit together and solve these problems.”

Both men, just rank-and-file members of their respective organisations, also said their opponents were heavily involved in foul play. Fatah supporters say they are arrested, abused and murdered by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas say the same thing happens to their people in the West Bank.

“The war between Hamas and Fatah is now worse and more dangerous for the Palestinians than the war with Israel,” said a Damascus Palestinian political analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of his links with both factions. “It’s a dangerous situation and it is getting worse, not better.”