The fighting may have died down apart from the occasional burst of gunfire, but the homes of Fatah members loyal to president Mahmud Abbas and the fallen security strongholds across the territory were considered fair game.

While victorious green-bandanna wearing Hamas militants posted outside Abbas’s own villa prevented looters from approaching, the home of former Fatah strongman in Gaza Mohammed Dahlan was not spared.

The possessions of Hamas’s bete noire became the spoils of war.

An AFP correspondent witnessed dozens of Palestinians taking everything they could carry from Dahlan’s villa -- furniture, plant pots and even the kitchen sink, complete with the plumbing fixtures.

Several thousand Hamas supporters gathered outside the parliament building in Gaza City, celebrating the victory and waving green flags as masked gunmen rode on the back of armoured vehicles taken from Abbas’s presidential guard.

Sacked Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya even made a brief appearance, raising his hand to salute the crowd.

The Muntada, Abbas’s seafront presidential compound, was the final bastion to fall on Thursday. Inside, the walls were charred by smoke and pockmarked by bullet holes, the floors littered with papers and spent rounds.

Witnesses reported seeing Hamas fighters remove computers, documents and guns. They also helped themselves to Fatah vehicles. Those they could not get started were towed away, draped in the green standard of Hamas.

‘We have rid ourselves of the traitors, we have rid ourselves of the traitors,’ says Ahid Ramlawi, 45, holding the green Hamas standard amid the seized armoured vehicles and jeeps.

The small seafront centre of bungalows where Palestinian Authority officials used to come to relax was also cleaned out. Windows, doors, toilets, furniture, taps, even the light bulbs were gone.

‘It’s normal. What the people are taking from the places controlled by Hamas fighters are the spoils of war. And in any case, all of this money has a bad smell to it,’ said Azem Azrallah, 37.

‘They tortured people in these buildings,’ he said. ‘We have to destroy them.’

The Islamists were firmly in control of Gaza on Friday, effectively creating an Islamic enclave on Israel’s border and splitting the Palestinians into two separate entities, jeopardising any prospect for a future state of their own and peace with Israel.

Although sporadic shooting still rattled around the coastal strip, the clashes that turned Gaza streets into war zones for a week were had now ceased and residents cooped up in their homes began to venture out.

Nevertheless, masked gunmen in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis shot dead execution-style a Palestinian preventive security lieutenant, medical sources and relatives said, with his family blaming Hamas for the killing.

The ubiquitous roadblocks that had dotted the streets for weeks had almost totally disappeared, and traffic was again circulating freely. Some shops and businesses were reopening.

But for how long cars and trucks will be able to move, and the shops have much of anything to sell is uncertain.

Israel announced on Friday that it was indefinitely closing all crossings into the Gaza Strip. Those crossings are a lifeline, with fuel and petrol, many basic foodstuffs, medicines and other essentials of daily life coming in by truck from Israel.

While some celebrated the Hamas victory, others took a grim view of the gunbattles that left more than 110 people dead in a week.

‘What is happening in Gaza is shameful and a farce,’ said Salah Juda, his eyes red from fatigue, as he strolls around the streets taking stock of the new reality on the ground.

‘The only goals are to destroy what belongs to the Palestinian people.’

In the Shatti refugee camp in Gaza City, home of Haniya, Abu Said, 45, was just as bitter.

‘Today there is a Gaza state controlled by Hamas and a state in the West Bank controlled by Fatah,’ he said. ‘We have destroyed the Palestinian cause and the dream of the Palestinian state.’