Now, how about governing?

Hamas--remember them, the people we warned the Palestinians NOT to elect in the elections we insisted that they hold last year?--is really on a roll in Gaza since their takeover a few weeks ago. They are two of two in solving prominent kidnappings, one involving the BBC reporter Alan Johnston, and the other involving the Gaza Zoo's lion, snatched by a drug gang who was holding her as a kind of cash cow. They would charge passersby $1/head to pose with the lion for a cute photo. Read about the rescue operation here. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been hell on animals, as you can imagine.

The question is, can they govern? Will they govern? I'd like to see some of that efficiency applied to the task of coming to some kind of agreement with Israel. Despite all the acrimony and injustice that has characterized this conflict, Israel is not going to be run into the sea, and it is in everyone's interest that the two sides forge a two-state arrangement. Fatah is toast...they do not enjoy people's trust, they are ineffectual, they can't be a partner. It seems that Hamas CAN be.

But WILL they? The question just kind of hangs in the air...