RAMALLAH, January 3 (JMCC) - Palestinian analysts, asked to assess conditions for 2011, have a decidedly negative outlook.

There is a state of weakness and loss, says writer and analyst Hassan Kashaf. A solution only seems possible for as a miracle from heaven - and the time for miracles is gone.

Palestinians and Israelis stand at an impasse, with direct negotiations stalled over the issue of Israel's settlement construction in the areas it occupied in 1967, where Palestinians seek to build their state.

But observers said internal Palestinian politics are as much a reason for their despair as the state of Palestinian-Israeli talks.

Kashaf said that the events of 2010 demonstrated the accumulation of challenges starting with the vacuum created by the 2004 death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. He said that a public crisis of confidence had been born out of the weakness of Palestinian political leadership and political parties.

Journalist Muhammed Daraghmeh saw no hope of reconciliation between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fateh in the coming year.

Hamas won 2006 parliamentary elections but was barred from leading by an international boycott of the movement. One year later, it wrested control of Gaza security installations from the Fateh-controlled Palestinian Authority, thus creating a fiefdom in Gaza and limiting Palestinian Authority control to the West Bank.

Now that the options of armed and popular resistance as well as negotiations have failed, I think it is a safe bet that the work of Salam Fayyad will withstand on the ground as a counterpart to Israel's attempts to create a fait accompli, said Daraghmeh.

Fayyad has set the year 2011 as a deadline for the creation of a Palestinian state by establishing institutions on the ground.