Well, the talks have been fruitless for decades, but that has nothing to do with any Fatah-Hamas agreement. We negotiated with the Arabs when they had a single government before their rift in Gaza.

That in itself is no big threat to the Palestinians, who rightly see the negotiations as pointless. Besides, Israel won’t be able to withhold tax transfers even from the Hamas government. But the Israeli government has a short memory: we did cooperate with a Palestinian government that included Hamas, before the terrorist group evicted Fatah from Gaza.

Right now, Israel, the US, and EU finance even the Hamas-only government in Gaza, pretending that their aid money goes directly to public servants. No doubt a similar arrangement would exist for the West Bank.

Hamas, however, has little incentive to join Fatah in the bankrupt and discredited Ramallah government. Ruling the enclave in Gaza unilaterally and with few responsibilities (as the Strip is supplied by the UNRWA) is a much better option. Hamas gains more by waiting for the Fatah government to fail on its own. Fatah leaders are also loathe to disrupt their cozy relations with Israel by bringing Hamas into the government.

One interesting point of reconciliation is the introduction of Hamas guerrillas into Fatah’s police forces, which are trained and armed by the Americans.

After Hamas wins in subsequent elections, the entire police force will fall under the terrorist group’s authority.

Incidentally, Israel has a similar objective regarding that bid. And Hamas thinks too highly of Jewish leaders if it imagines they would be unwilling to negotiate under fire.

Which is not true. When Salafists challenged Hamas’ rule two years ago, the moderate terrorists stormed their mosque, killing or wounding every Salafist inside. It took the Salafists more than a year to return to their former strength.

Israel has to decide whether we will deal with Gaza as a state—and pound it in response to any attacks from there—or a lawless territory whose nominal government cannot be held responsible for all domestic acts of violence, in which case Israel is legally permitted to take over the place. We tried that in the West Bank: we pretended that Fatah terrorists are good and cooperative, and cannot be held responsible for Hamas attacks. Now we are taking a similar approach to Gaza. Israel’s attitude invites established terrorist groups to tolerate violent offshoots: they score PR points by allowing attacks on Israel to be carried out by other groups under their control, and do not risk Israeli retaliation.

Even if Israel wants to discriminate between good Hamas and bad Salafists, we still have plenty of Salafist targets, including their mosques. And even if we do not want to target their mosques in daytime (though they have no compunction about targeting our civilians) we can destroy the empty buildings at night.

This is the type of Intifada-like grassroots movement that is most difficult for Israelis to quell.