Seasoned observers have been making droll cracks about a "two-state solution" - Hamas gets Gaza, Fatah gets the West Bank. But even that cynical jest is wishful thinking. The better bet is that the West Bank will eventually fall Hamas' way, too.
This is the logical consequence of the fraudulence of "Palestinian nationalism". There has never been any such thing. There is no evidence anywhere in the "Palestinian Authority" that anyone there is interested in building a state and running it. In conventional post-colonial scenarios of the Sixties and Seventies, liberation movements used terrorism as a means to advance nationalism. By contrast, Arafat's gang used nationalism as a means to advance terrorism. With him out of the way, it was deluded to assume that the "Palestinian people" would stick with a bunch of corrupt secular socialists with little appeal to anyone other than French intellectuals and Swiss bankers. The Mahmoud Abbas types play well on CNN and in EU subsidy negotiations, but because "Palestinian nationalism" was always bogus it's no surprise that the population of Gaza would seek a real identity elsewhere. In the Islamism of Hamas, they have found it. And, if it causes problems for all those Arab League deadbeats who promoted the pseudo-struggle of the "Palestinian people" for their own ends, well, they should have thought of that before they loosed this particular genie.
The question now is whether the Hamasification of the "Middle East peace process" will wean the Europeans off their fetishization of the Palestinians. Don't hold your breath.
Exhibit No. 1: Ehud Barak gave Arafat the best deal he ever got and that the Palestinians probably ever will get and he turned it down. Arafat never wanted peace because with peace would come a two-state solution. He would become the head of state of a fourth rate satrapy and gone would be his dreams of glory and the support of his many 'patrons'. Hamas is just much more forthright - exterminate the Jews.
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