Those of you who support an end to conflict in the Middle East and who think it can be obtained by peace treaties might want to read this story and remember that Hamas and Fatah had a peace deal. Here is the fruit of that deal:

Hamas fighters overran one of the rival Fatah movement’s most important security installations in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, and witnesses said the victors dragged vanquished gunmen from the building and killed them in the street.
[…]

Fatah officials said seven of their fighters were shot to death in the street outside Preventive Security. A witness, Jihad Abu Ayad, said the men were being killed in front of their wives and children.

“They are executing them one by one,” Abu Ayad said. “They are carrying one of them on their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and shooting.”

[…]

“We are telling our people that the past era has ended and will not return, ” Islam Shahawan, a spokesman for Hamas’ militia, told Hamas radio. “The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived.”

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, heralded what he called “Gaza’s second liberation,” after Israel’s 2005 evacuation of the coastal strip.

I think they’ve demonstrated why Hamas can’t be trusted to uphold their end of a peace deal and why Israel would be stupid to trust them.

And then there’s this:

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he discussed the possible deployment of a multinational force in Gaza with the Security Council on Wednesday.
“We have always asked for international forces to come to the West Bank and Gaza,” Abbas confidant Saeb Erekat told Israel’s Army Radio. But, he added, “Honestly, on the personal level, I believe that if we don’t help ourselves as Palestinians, nobody can.”

What? Sending in troops in the middle of a civil war? I thought we didn’t do that.