I've been wondering how Palestinians were going to reconcile their strong support for terrorism...

A new poll has shown that Palestinians support continued suicide bombings against Israel by 55.4 percent as compared to 37.6 percent who oppose it. The poll, conducted by Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, also found:
* That 50.8 percent of Palestinian believe that rocket attacks upon Israel from Gaza help Palestinians achieve their goals, as against 20.8 percent who believe such attacks harm the attainment of Palestinian goals;
* If elections were held today, 28.6 percent of Palestinians would vote for Hamas and 27.9 percent of Palestinians would vote for Fateh;
* Similarly, 27.7 percent of Palestinians most trust Hamas while 26 percent most trust Fateh. (Jerusalem Media & Communications Center, Poll No. 67, January 2009).

... with the bitter realization that the IDF systematically dismantled Hamas. I originally thought it was going to be wild conspiracy fantasies about how Hamas actually won. But it looks like reality still counts for something on the Palestinian street. Hamas's failure to commit mass murder did some damage to their credibility. Palestinians are losing confidence that Iran's proxies can be entrusted with a full-blown genocidal project like eradicating Israel.

One potential solution: combine Hamas's fanaticism with Fatah's "the US will never let Israel attack us" impunity. The Palestinian public gets to keep their delusions of eventually wiping out the Jewish State and the international community gets to keep its increasingly tenuous nudge-wink pledge not to embrace Hamas. And wouldn't you know it, the Obama administration seems pretty psyched about exactly that arrangement:

The Obama administration has given the Palestinian Authority a "green light" to talk to Hamas about forming a Palestinian unity government, a PA official in Ramallah said over the weekend. The official said that Washington had also given Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the go-ahead to resume his efforts to achieve reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. "The new administration has a different policy than that of [former US president] George W. Bush," the official told The Jerusalem Post. "The administration of President Barack Obama believes that a Hamas-Fatah government is good for stability." Cairo has issued invitations to representatives of Hamas, Fatah and several other Palestinian groups to attend reconciliation talks that are due to begin in Cairo on Wednesday. Fatah and Hamas officials confirmed that the Egyptians had invited them to the talks. Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said that for the talks to succeed, the PA must first release all "political prisoners" from its West Bank jails.

At least this will save Hamas the trouble of militarily expelling or politically uprooting Fatah from the West Bank. They're going to get those billions of dollars of internationally-supplied PA weapons one way or another. Might as well be efficient about it. Ditto for officially releasing prisoners. Fatah's current approach: just let them escape. See? Efficient!

Israel has already made it clear that they won't be doing business with Hamas. But Obama envoy George Mitchell has made it clear that Israel is expected to do business with the Palestinians until they have their own state. No way this goes poorly.

References and previously after the jump...