The lesser evil.

THE news that Hamas has murdered its way to power over Fatah in Gaza could hardly be worse. At the street level, the violence is dreadful. Hostages are taken and shot. Handcuffed men, rightly or wrongly accused of belonging to Fatah, are thrown off high buildings. Looting is widespread, as Hamas lays hands on Fatah property and foreign bank accounts. A good many frightened families would escape from this circle of hell to Israel if they could, and many more have fled to the West Bank, where for the time being they are under the rule of Fatah, and so beyond the reach of Hamas.

Fatah is the creation and legacy of Yasser Arafat, reflecting all his faults of corruption and duplicity. Under him, however, Fatah was a nationalist movement expressing at least an outward interest in creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, has so far proved unable or unwilling to put an end to the corruption and duplicity, or to make the compromises required for a Palestinian state to come into existence. He has only himself to blame that Hamas could truthfully call his Fatah administration a failure, win an election, and be in a position to stage its coup.

Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its solution to everything is therefore the Islamization of Palestinian society. Far from a solution, this is fracturing Palestinians even further. Gaza under Hamas will have enforcers of Islamic law and custom, while the West Bank remains secular. Nor is this divide the end of it. According to its Islamist doctrine, Hamas has the religious duty of eliminating Israel, and as a matter of faith believes that this is a realistic option. Negotiations--a two-state solution that would involve acceptance of Israel--are specifically excluded. Just over the horizon, Iran and Syria are striving for regional supremacy, unscrupulously arranging for Hamas to fight battles on their behalf.

The extension of the Hamas coup into the West Bank, thus supplanting Fatah as the ruling authority there, would transform the current crisis into immediate disaster for the whole Middle East. The West Bank is presently holding out like a redoubt, and the United States, Israel, Jordan, and all secular Arabs have a shared interest that it continue to do so. Support for Abbas is hardly inviting but it is the best available option, possibly the sole available option except war. Abbas and Fatah have to be enabled to survive in authority for as long as it takes the unfortunate Palestinians to realize that Hamas and Islamization are certain to make their lives unlivable.