The lesser evil.(THE MIDDLE EAST)

THE news that Hamas has murdered its way to power over Fatah in Gaza could hardly be worse. At the street level, the violence is dreadful. Hostages are taken and shot. Handcuffed men, rightly or wrongly accused of belonging to Fatah, are thrown off high buildings. Looting is widespread, as Hamas lays hands on Fatah property and foreign bank accounts. A good many frightened families would escape from this circle of hell to Israel if they could, and many more have fled to the West Bank, where for the time being they are under the rule of Fatah, and so beyond the reach of Hamas.

Fatah is the creation and legacy of Yasser Arafat, reflecting all his faults of corruption and duplicity. Under him, however, Fatah was a nationalist movement expressing at least an outward interest in creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, has so far proved unable or unwilling to put an end to the corruption and duplicity, or to make the compromises required for a Palestinian state to come into existence. He has only himself to blame that Hamas could truthfully call his Fatah administration a failure, win an election, and be in a position to stage its coup.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its solution to everything is therefore the Islamization of Palestinian society. Far ...