Hamas is now running the Palestinian Authority.

In an attempt to quell my rampant fear and actually get a handle on what all is going on in Israel I've started catching up on the last two days of NPR (god bless the internet!) and I've heard a lot of good points from various sources, some of which I agree with and some of which I think are bunk.

Today's NYTimes Editorial is actually a really great one, and I highly recommend reading it.

The on-the-ground reality of a bankrupt PA with high unemployment and a much decreased allowance of International Aid (because of Hamas' status as a terrorist organization) will most likely keep Hamas in check in the near future. The majority of what Hamas did even before the election was not terrorism (I don't know the split) so they have got to focus more intently on the social services end of their work in order to establish legitimacy for themselves on the international arena.

The unfortunate truth is that Hamas is just one of a long line of terrorist organizations that exist(ed) in the middle east who join the legitimate political arena. The PLO was one, Fatah was one and there's one faction in what was the PLO that still is. Hizbollah is both in politics and in anti-Israel terrorism. In 1948, Israel even had at least one faction, Lechi, perpetrating bombings against the British. (They, however tried not to kill people, just disrupt British operations.) Lechi got rolled into the IDF and the more radical ideologues got pushed out, where the centrists got pulled into the government.

So my hope is that the constituents that voted in their MP's from Hamas will require that Hamas DO SOMETHING to alleviate the general suffering of the average Palestinian. The political reality of Hamas having the OUTRIGHT majority in the PA Parliament might rein them in. Whether they can rein in Islamic Jihad and the other less politically savvy terrorist organizations is a different story.