accompanies this article which starts off well
The de facto division of Palestine over the last week into a Hamas-led enclave in Gaza and a Fatah-dominated West Bank marks a new low in the sorry annals of Palestinian affairs. Part of the blame lies with President Mahmoud Abbas, who has proved utterly unable to cope with the challenges of leadership, a fact only underscored by his “firing” of the elected Hamas government that had already in effect fired him. Israel’s wildly unpopular prime minister, Ehud Olmert (a man whose approval rating recently hit 2 percent), played a contributing role by bombing Gaza last summer (in retaliation for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers), a move that further weakened Abbas and his Fatah party.
But then flops
The Bush administration, too, deserves its share of the blame for openly neglecting the Middle East conflict for its first four years in office. As it turned out, feeling abandoned made ordinary Palestinians despondent about the prospects for peace — which enabled them to cast protest votes for Hamas without worrying that its election would effectively scuttle an already moribund peace process.
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