Israel, Hamas to negotiate Gaza deal in Cairo.

Byline: Karin Laub and Maggie Michael

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The outlines of a solution for battered, blockaded Gaza are emerging after Tuesday's tentative Israel-Hamas cease-fire: Norway is organizing a donor conference and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas aims to oversee rebuilding and reassert his authority in the territory, lost to Hamas in 2007.

Forces loyal to Abbas would be deployed at Gaza's crossings to encourage Israel and Egypt to lift the closure they imposed after the Hamas takeover.

Indirect Israel-Hamas talks in Cairo are to tackle the details. The hope is that promises of a better life for Gazans will coax compromise and avert what had been looking like a fight to the finish.

The gaps remain wide, especially between Israel and Hamas.

Israel says it has inflicted a painful blow to Hamas' military capabilities in the monthlong fighting and wants to make sure the group cannot re-arm if border restrictions are eased.

''The extent to which we are going to be ready to cooperate with the efforts to have better access and movement in Gaza will deeply depend on the kind of arrangements that would secure our peace and security,'' said Yossi Kuperwasser, a senior official in Israel's Strategic Affairs Ministry.

Hamas, in turn, has signaled flexibility on ceding some authority to Abbas in Gaza, but insists on having a say on reconstruction and that it will not disarm.

Izzat Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said disarming isn't up for discussion.

''We'd take the life of anyone who tries to take the weapons of resistance,'' he told The Associated Press.

Despite such tough talk, Hamas is in a position of relative weakness.

The Islamic militant group's fortunes changed dramatically last year after the Egyptian military deposed a Hamas-friendly government in Cairo and began closing hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

The closures deprived Hamas of a key source of revenue -- the taxation of goods brought through the tunnels -- and prevented weapons and cash destined for Hamas from flowing into Gaza.

By this spring, Hamas was in such a severe financial crisis that it accepted a reconciliation deal with Abbas. Under that agreement, an Abbas-led government was to run both the West Bank and Gaza, though thorny issues were put off, including Hamas' insistence that it retain control over its security forces. The unity government was stumbling by the time Israel-Hamas fighting erupted on July 8.

Even before...