These are the last broadcast words of a Fatah activist, in the process of being murdered by the Haams:

Hamas has stormed the home of Jamal Abu Jideyan, general secretary of Fatah in Northern Gaza and an Al Aqsa Brigades commander, and assassinated him. About 20 minutes ago we were listening to Sawt Al Hurriya, a Palestinian radio station, as Jideyan’s brother called into the station frantic. Hamas militants had surrounded the family’s home in the Jabbaliya refugee camp and had fired 16 RPG rounds at the home, with 35 family members inside, he said. “They’re firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We’re not Jews,” he screamed into the telephone live on air, gun fire bursting in the background.:

"We are not Jews," said the Fatah fighter, therefore, we should not die. Palestinians, including the Fatah themselves, were so transfixed by the notion of "resistance," that they failed to understand that the Hamas guns were aimed at them, and at liquidation of the Palestinian national project. The Palestinians never internalized the idea of sovereignty and what it means, and the need to abandon genocidal projects and racism in favor of national construction.

A Hamas spokesperson put it succinctly:

"We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return," Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas' militia, told Hamas radio. "The era of justice and Islamic rule has arrived."

Indeed, the era of Islamic rule has apparently arrived, and that was goal of the Hamas.

The two items sum up what happened: The Hamas sold Islamism to Palestinian population in general, and even to the secular Fatah, under the guise of "resistance" and "killing Jews." In the popular mind, building a state and a peaceful future took second place to killing Jews and "resistance." Fatah activists were branded by Hamas as traitors and Quislings who got the support of the United States and Israel.

As for justice, those who have supported "justice" for Palestine by eliminating Israel can see from the Gaza violence that Hamas "justice" entails invading hospitals, killing doctors and throwing people off the top of buildings. That is the sort of justice one may expect under Hamas rule. Here is another example of Islamic justice:

"They are executing them one by one," Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot dead in the street outside Preventive Security building. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed before their wives and children.

"They are executing them one by one," Abu Ayad said. They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting.":

The attacks were initiated at an opportune time, when Fatah forces leader Mahmoud Dahlan was outside of Gaza undergoing medical treatment. The supposed trigger for the Hamas attack was an RPG fired at the house of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Hanniyeh. But the attack, which came while Dahlan was away, makes no sense. The RPG was probably not going to kill Hanniyeh and the Fatah were unprepared to defend themselves or to take over the government. Was it really launched by a Fatah loyalist, or was it a manufactured provocation?

The real motivation for what is happening in Gaza has nothing much to do with Palestinians or occupation. The orders come from Syria and Iran, who were never interested in a Palestinian state, and certainly not in a state that is controlled by the secular Fatah and its allies, and absolutely not a state that would be a protege of the US and the West, and that would take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict off the table. Had the US administration and the quartet roadmap plan succeeded in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran and Syria would have been isolated in the Arab and Muslim arena. The Saudi sponsored Arab Peace plan would perhaps become a reality, and the place for Islamist extremism and Syrian intrigues would have vanished from Middle East diplomacy.

The need to maintain the Palestinian Authority in power was always recognized as a priority by the Bush administration. That is why the Israel government was not allowed to move in on the Muqata and Yasser Arafat. That is why Israel have been forced, during all the years of the Intifada, and even after the Israeli withdrawal, to supply electricity, fuel and water to the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza. The water that is drunk by the suicide bombers and the Qassam launchers and the holy dervishes of the Hamas comes from Israel. The radio stations that broadcast the blood curdling messages of murder for Jews and Fatah "traitors" are powered by Israeli generators, and the gasoline in the trucks that transport the rocket launching teams is refined in Israel. The charge that Israel is "choking" Gaza has to be viewed in the light of those facts.

Israeli acquiescence in the events in Gaza was at the insistence of the United States, which also transferred quantities of arms to the Fatah in the hope that that would enable them to resist the inevitable showdown with Hamas. It cannot be imagined that different Israeli governments were enthusiastic about this policy. Ariel Sharon was not a great lover of the Palestinian people or a believer in the cause of Palestinian Arab independence. He vowed that the Gaza settlements would remain under Israeli sovereignty forever. But under pressure of the White House bulldozer, he left Mr. Arafat to survive in the Muqata and to be succeeded by Mahmoud Abbas, and then he withdrew from Gaza, evacuating his beloved settlements, the folly of Israeli nationalism. In doing so however, Sharon threw out the baby with the bathwater, because the IDF too withdrew from Gaza, ending any possibility of keeping order there and allowing a reasonable transition to responsible Palestinian government. The Hamas filled the vacuum left by the IDF.

No Israeli government could agree to Mr. Abbas's terms of peace, which include return of Palestinian refugees and surrender of all of East Jerusalem, including Israeli national institutions there such as the Hebrew University on Mt Scopus, the historic Jewish quarter of the Old city and the Western (Wailing Wall). The absurd charge that Abbas and Fatah are tools of Israel, leveled by the Hamas, could only be cooked up in the feverish brains of Islamist Mullahs.

But Israel had maneuvered itself into a position where it is almost totally dependent on the United States for military aid and diplomatic support. Therefore, there was no choice but to undertake disengagement, to allow the existence of the Palestinian authority even after the Hamas had taken it over, and even, for the unlucky PM Olmert, to acquiesce in daily Qassam rocket terror in Sderot, inside Green Line Israel, emanating from the previously occupied Gaza strip. It doesn't matter if U.S. policy makers are totally ignorant of Middle East reality. They have the money and the power, so their word is law. But now that their pet puppy, the one that they so wanted their parents to buy, is sick, the adolescents in Washington are not interested in taking care of it. As usual, having imposed an inappropriate solution, the DC adolescents walk away from the consequences.

It is true that Israel did not oblige those who wanted it to grant more concessions in order to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas. It should have been done. It is unlikely that any such concessions would have really helped Palestinian moderates however. Every concession that Israel made was always seen as a victory for "armed resistance" and not for moderation. At the same time, every concession and every offer were always denigrated as too little, any number of prisoners offered as a confidence building gesture was considered to be a Zionist trick.

The debacle in Gaza has ominous portents for others as well. The method of Hamas, was to gain legitimacy for its rule through a unity government with Fatah, and then to destroy Fatah from within so to speak. The same "unity government" proposal is now on the table in Lebanon, where the Hezbollah are seeking to take over the government, and the ultimate result may be the same in Lebanon as in Gaza: an Islamist take over.

The crumbling of the Fatah looks like historical inevitability in action. Mahmoud Abbas inexplicably failed to give any orders in time. He was being true to his often repeated pledge to Palestinians that the arms supplied with American help would not be used against Palestinians. Fatah would only kill Jews. But the Hamas was obviously not making such fine distinctions. An enemy of Islam is an enemy of Islam for them. The guns supplied by the Americans were surrendered to Hamas or captured by them:

Fatah officials here confirmed that Hamas had seized large amounts of weapons and military equipment belonging to Abbas's security forces in the Gaza Strip. Some of the weapons were supplied to the PA in recent weeks by Egypt and Jordan as part of a US security plan to boost Fatah-controlled forces.

Hamas said it had seized thousands of M-16 and Kalashnikov rifles and pistols, communication equipment, armored vehicles, trucks, binoculars, military outfits, tents, sleeping bags, hand grenades, mortars and documents.

Hamas militiamen were seen driving some of the confiscated vehicles that have been decorated with Hamas flags and signs.

Pictures of the weapons were posted on a number of Hamas-linked Web sites. "Most of the weapons came from Egypt and Jordan over the past few years," a senior Fatah official told The Jerusalem Post. "They did not come directly from the US, although the Americans had initiated the supply of weapons and ammunition."

Despite overwhelming numerical superiority, Fatah forces didn't fight, because Abbas didn't give the order until it was too late, after Fatah officials threatened a revolt. He proved to be at least a worthless leader, and perhaps something worse.

Essentially, the project for a Palestinian state is in ruins. Except for the Hamas, all of the participants and all of the bystanders really do not comprehend what has happened in Gaza, or what has happened to them, or what they should be doing. Israeli and American peace groups are silent, or dwell on issues like the two state solution and the Israeli separation fence, that are not top priority or are irrelevant. Israel and the United States are dithering about, trying to decide what they should do.

Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev had this to say about the events:

If we were to negotiate with Abu Mazen, at least for the foreseeable future, his ability to deliver in Gaza will be severely limited."

. As Charles Levinson noted, it is the understatement of the week.

Ronny Shaked writes that the victory of the Hamas presages a terrible nightmare - a two-state Palestinian solution, with Hamas controlling Gaza. He is wrong. For Israel, that is actually the small nightmare. The big nightmare, far more realistic, is the one-state Palestinian solution, with Hamas controlling both Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the PLO. Syria is on its way to realizing its long term goal of liquidating the Fatah, or returning the Fatah to being a subservient offspring of Syrian intelligence, as it was before the Six Day War.

Not only the Fatah, but the U.S. government, the peace groups, Christian groups, the secular Palestinian movements, the US groups that have been insisting on greater U.S. involvement in the peace process, the EU and the Israeli government - in short, just about everyone, should be mobilizing to stop the Hamas, but nobody is doing anything at all. All of the bright hopes for the future of the Palestinians are being blown out by the Hamas as a child blows out a birthday candle. The world ends not with a bang, but a whimper.

Ami Isseroff