"The two-state solution has finally worked."

Daniel Pipes:

Internationally, Fatah and Hamas engaging in war crimes against each other punctures a supreme myth of modern politics: Palestinian victimisation. Further, as two Palestines squabble over control of, say, the UN seat granted in 1974 to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, they damage a second myth of a Palestinian state.

"The Palestinians have come close to putting, by themselves, the last nail in the coffin of the Palestinian cause," Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal observes.

A Palestinian journalist notes sarcastically: "The two-state solution has finally worked."

In contrast, the Islamist movement gains. Establishing a bulwark in the Gaza Strip gives it a beachhead at the heart of the Middle East from which to infiltrate Egypt, Israel and the West Bank. The Hamas triumph also offers a psychological boost for Islamists globally. By the same token, it represents a signal Western defeat in the war on terror, brutally exposing former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's short-sighted, feckless unilateral-withdrawal policy from Gaza as well as the Bush administration's heedless rush to elections.

Read the whole thing.

[Hamas] [Fatah] [Israel] [Gaza] [Wet Bank]