SWJ Blog post - Preparing for the Next Battle of Gaza by Gary Anderson.

The current situation in Gaza is a laboratory for the kind of conflicts that we are likely to see in the immediate future throughout the world. The best case solution would be to broker an agreement where the Hamas radicals and the more moderate Fatah faction can agree to accept that the existence of Israel is a fact and for Hamas to stop shooting rockets at the Israelis and threatening to annihilate them, which Hamas is not in a position to do in any case. If that fails, the big question for America and her allies is whether or not to support a Fattah military attempt to retake Gaza.

Fatah is now like "“Sarge”" in the Beetle Bailey cartoon. It has gone over the brink and is holding onto a tree on the side of the cliff. The Americans and Israelis have offered Fattah a rope. The question is both whether the Fatah leadership will grab it and whether the Americans and Israelis will know how to handle the lifeline. None of this is a given. This is, at best, a tenuous situation. It might lead to a happy ending, or it might be a debacle. Everything depends on how Fatah handles Israeli and American support, and how they handle Hamas...