Graffiti on the walls of this refugee camp depicts masked Hamas members firing rockets into Israel. People talk about the Islamic militant group with pride and awe.
Israel is demanding that Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas use force to stop the militants, but a faceoff with the popular and well-organized Hamas would be a tough battle for the new premier's hobbled security forces, analysts say.
Abbas has sworn he will not raise weapons against fellow Palestinians.
Instead, he has turned to Egyptian mediators to help him in efforts to negotiate an agreement with militants to halt attacks on Israelis as part of the US-backed "road map" that promises a Palestinian state by 2005.
"We will not resort to a crackdown under any circumstances," Palestinian Cabinet minister Ziad Abu Amr said Monday. "It will be counterproductive."
Some people say that attempting to suppress Hamas would plunge Palestinians into a civil war and that Abbas has neither the power nor the popularity to win such a battle.
"If he was going to use force tomorrow, I don't think he has a chance," said Ali Jerbawi, a political scientist at the West Bank's Bir Zeit University.
Abbas' security forces are fragmented into competing groups and have been badly damaged by Israel in more than 32 months of violence, Jerbawi said, and it's unclear whether they would commit to such an operation in the first place.
Founded in 1987, Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in the recent violence with suicide bombings, remote-controlled bombs and rifle attacks in pursuit of its goal of a Muslim Middle East and the destruction of Israel.
It bolsters its popularity through a network of social and charitable organizations that distributes rice, cooking oil, sugar and salt to the poor.
"I would join hands with even the devil just to get some food," said one Jabaliya resident, Abdel Majid, 45.
Few Palestinians voice support for Abbas, who took office April 30 and has a popularity rating in the single digits in most polls.
In Jabaliya, a refugee camp radicalized by poverty and hopelessness, many view Abbas as a stooge of Israel and the US and consider the Palestinian Authority as corrupt thieves who run from Israeli raids.
Hamas members, on the other hand, are admired for standing up to Israeli soldiers, often fighting from behind huge mounds of dirt and rubble dumped at key points in the camp.
"Hamas is fighting for our rights," said Ahmed Henawi, 60. "If [Abbas] wants to fight Hamas, he will be fighting the whole nation."
Israeli raids on Jabaliya are often reprisals, because Hamas uses the camp as cover for launching homemade rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot. But people here say they don't blame Hamas for Israel's retaliation.
Henawi sits outside an appliance repair shop smoking cigarettes and drinking tea with a group of friends. None have jobs and nearly all live in severely overcrowded homes. Henawi lives with 11 other people in a three-room house. Moen Awayda, 36, lives with 17 in four rooms.
"We are living like dogs," said Awayda, who is a member of Abbas' Fatah movement but says he would stand with Hamas if the premier tried to crack down.
After US President George W. Bush launched the road map at a June 4 summit in Aqaba, Jordan, violence intensified between Hamas and Israel.
Hamas took part in a raid that killed four Israeli soldiers and sent a suicide bomber to blow up a Jerusalem bus, an attack that killed 17 people.
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