A quote from Michael Totten’s latest dispatch from Ramallah:

???????What do you think about the prospects for peace now that Hamas won???????? I said.

???????The Israelis have an opportunity,??????? he said. ???????A piece of the puzzle was missing before. Permanent peace must have the signature of the Islamists. Now the Israelis can get it.???????

The Israelis can get it if the Islamists will give it, and if they will give it sincerely. That doesn????????t look even remotely likely any time soon. I asked Yossi Klein Halevi if it was even possible to be optimistic under the circumstances. He said ???????I????????m optimistic that we might be able to solve this after the next war.??????? That????????s about as hopeful as it gets.

Today’s news:

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip May 22, 2006 (AP)???????? Hamas militiamen and Palestinian police attacked each other with assault rifles and grenades in a chaotic firefight Monday that turned downtown Gaza City into a battlefield and killed an aide to the Jordanian ambassador.

The shootout near the parliament building, which also wounded 11 people, was the worst fighting since the Hamas-led government sent its militia into the streets last week and increased fears the Palestinians were careening toward civil war.

Israeli airstrikes are few and far between, with the country pulling out of the Palestinian Territories and surrounding itself with huge concrete wall. The Arab countries are no longer scrambling for war. The intifada has been over for awhile now. Israel survived and is basically impenetrable now. Hamas may want Israel’s complete and total destruction, but even they must know that this will not happen. The Palestinians have lost and are demoralized, so now they must settle with a two-state solution and accept that they will have to live side-by-side with Israel.

They must now consider what they want this state to look like. Only there are two violently competing visions for this. The quote in Michael Totten’s story is correct. Only, the war will not be between Israel and the Palestinians, but between the Palestinians themselves. With the upsurge in violence, Fatah and Hamas may come to the conclusion that they can work together. Civil war is in neither of their interests. But with the assassination of Fatah’s chief of intelligence, this realistically could be impossible. Only a civil war, with the utter defeat of one of the sides, may result in a dominant vision that can bring progress to Palestine, in whichever direction that may be.