SO WISE YOU COULD WISH IT WERE INTENTIONAL:

Israel Strengthens Hamas Some More (Peter Hirschberg, 3/24/08, IPS)

If Israeli leaders had hoped that their blockade of Gaza and the military's early March incursion into the coastal strip might undermine support for the leadership of the Islamic Hamas movement in power there, then they will have been disappointed with the findings of a recent opinion poll.

The survey results will also have bolstered the view in Israel, already being expressed by some politicians, that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is not the man with whom Israel should be negotiating.

If new Palestinian presidential elections were held now, the poll indicated, Gaza-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would get 47 percent of the vote, while Abbas, who heads the rival and more moderate Fatah movement, would get 46 percent.

The swing toward Haniyeh has been dramatic: the last poll by the West Bank-based Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, which was conducted in December, gave Haniyeh 37 percent and Abbas 56 percent.

Hamas can deliver security and the PLO can't, so if Israel were doing this on purpose it would make sense. There's little evidence though that its post-Sharon leadership gets it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 24, 2008 8:09 PM