This is what you get when idiots like Bush and Blair demand democratic elections and then arm and back the gangsters who lost the election, over the elected government.

Neither the UK nor the USA has paid lip service to being honest brokers in the Arab Israeli conflict.

Israel should be set equally onerous conditions, like having to agree to hand back all the lands captured in the 1967 war, including East Jerusalem and the Golan heights. It should also have to agree to take in all the Palestinians that it ethnically cleansed. No country should be exempt from the war crimes conventions.

Just maybe, when Hamas have defeated Fatah militarily, and all the other militias, like the Al Axa Martyrs Brigade that provide plausible deniability for Fatah then Hamas can form a Palestinian National Army and National Police force under the control of the ELECTED government.

Could that be a bad thing? Or is this just what Israel is worried about?

I think not because for the first time Israel will have someone to negotiate with who can actually strong enough deliver. Yes this will mean that Israel will have to face the painful choices that it has been putting off for the last 40 years. It is only when the painful decisions are made that a real and lasting peace can be had.

Unless of course the object of the current road map, and quartet is to only appear to have peace talks for the sake of the cameras.

Dr Suusi Watson