The Silver Lining to the Hamas coup in Gaza

The violent coup in Gaza by the Islamic extremist terrorist group Hamas this past week is a tragic turn of events for the Palestinians and for the prospects for peace in the region. There are, however, useful lessons that the West can learn from this tragedy.

First and foremost, Western pressure to impose democracy doesn't necessarily work the way we expect: The Palestinian people overwhelmingly voted for Hamas, a group whose goal is the total destruction of Israel. We also have learned this lesson in Iraq.

Secondly, giving legitimacy to puppet "heads of state" doesn't work: Facts on the ground should trump our desire for peace. The West wasted substantial diplomatic currency and valuable time by giving former Palestinian PM Abbas undeserved international legitimacy - when he was obviously powerless and not endorsed by the Palestinian people.

Lastly, diplomacy has its limitations: Papering over a conflict with a worthless peace agreement is more damaging than doing nothing.

The Israeli government has clearly stated that it is not pleased with the consolidation of the Gaza strip under Hamas. This takes the likelihood of peaceful two state solution as envisioned by the quartet off the map, and forces all the parties to examine how this deterioration happened (even after the Israelis pulled out of Gaza 3 years ago) – and where the parties go from here.

Of course, the prime suspects in this deterioration are Egypt and Iran. In an effort to give Islamic extremists a place to vent their violent tendencies outside of Egyptian territory, Egypt allowed the large scale smuggling of Islamic fighters from across the Arab world, and allowed the smuggling of massive quantities of arms into Gaza. Iran, on the other hand, trained the fighters and supplied the explosives that were being smuggled into Gaza.

The silver lining to this event is that the pretenses that have allowed this deterioration to develop are gone. Now the conflict may actually reach a climatic end where it is allowed to "burn itself out' - and the possibility of peace could once again emerge.