The Pope heads for Bolivia

enclave, have continued to fire occasional rockets into Israel.

In recent months, Salafists claiming allegiance to Islamic State have emerged in Gaza, carrying out attacks against Hamas, firing rockets at Israel and making wider threats.

Egypt and Israel, which control access to Gaza, have taken steps that indirectly help Hamas, opening their borders to allow the freer flow of goods and people into the territory, a move that shores up Hamas’s popularity against the Salafists.

There are reports of Israel and Hamas engaging in talks, with the Islamist group offering a long-term truce. While there has been no confirmation from either side, such contacts have happened in the past and there is a quiet acknowledgement that at some level both have to reach a deal with”'the devil they know”.

Yet even if some progress can be made in such talks, internal Palestinian divisions are an ever present disruption.

Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and head of the Fatah party, remains at odds with Hamas, with whom he agreed a unity government in June last year.

That deal was supposed to allow the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, to resume responsibility for borders and security in Gaza, but it hasn’t happened. Distrust between Hamas and Fatah has never been greater. If Palestinian elections were held tomorrow, polls suggest Hamas would probably win. – Reuters QUITO: Pope Francis flew to Bolivia yesterday after drawing about 1.5 million people to Masses in Ecuador on the first leg of a “homecoming” tour, where he urged the world to take better care of the environment and the poor.

In Ecuador, the pope held two Masses, both attended by hundreds of thousands of people, in Quito and the steamy coastal city of Guayaquil.

Ecuador highlights, possibly more than any other country in the world, the inherent difficulties within the pope’s recent environmental encyclical.

A large amount of the oil that the socialist government hopes will help feed the poor lies under rainforest land.

In his final speech in Quito on on Tuesday, the pope said: “The tapping of natural resources, which are so abundant in Ecuador, must not be concerned with short-term benefits.

“We received this world as an inheritance from past generations, but also as a loan from future generations, to whom we will have to return it!” – Reuters