HAMAS' 'ENORMOUS BLUNDER': At least that is how Josh Muravchik puts it in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Personally, I'd feel better if there was more vocal and sustained condemnation--and action, like the reinstatement of the boycott.

What is even more worrisome about the events enumerated above is that most of them are devoid of any such strategic logic. For example, the Hamas "putsch" in Gaza—as Marwan Barghouti, the hero of the Palestinian intifada, labeled it from his prison cell—was an enormous blunder.

Hamas already mostly controlled Gaza. It is hard to imagine what gains it can reap from its "victory." But it is easy to see the losses. Fatah, and the government of its leader Mahmoud Abbas, will be able to restore their strength in the West Bank with the eager assistance of virtually the whole outside world, while Gaza will be shut off and denied outside aid far more strictly than during the past year. Israel will retaliate against shelling with a freer hand. Egypt will tighten its border. And Hamas has in one swoop negated its own supreme achievement, namely winning a majority in Palestine's 2006 parliamentary elections. Until now, Hamas had a powerful argument: how can the West demand democracy and then boycott the winners? But now it is Hamas itself that has destroyed Palestinian democracy by staging an armed coup. Its democratic credentials have gone up in the smoke of its own arson.

[Hat tip: Jonah Goldberg]

Technorati Tag: Hamas and Gaza.