To accuse Abu Mazen of being in "a sulk" since the election of Hamas is misleading at best and fundamentally stupid at worst. He has been faced with trying to deal with the mess that he inherited from Rais Arafat, the impact of continual subversion of the PNA and the Palestinian nation by neighbouring states who claim to be allies and the problem of trying to revive a peace process while the elected government is fundamentally opposed to the concept. To compound this the Israelis shifted the goal posts by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, which Hamas stupidly proclaimed as a victory only to discover that it was in fact a defeat and merely allowed the Israelis to more effectively besiege Gaza.
The conditions that caused Arafats "demise" existed before Oslo and had nothing to do with the Israelis (but they may have exploited this weakness). Arafat had mainatined power by playing off one faction against another, and encouraging factionalism. He bribed them effectively by letting them steal from the Palestinian people through various monopolies. This created absurdities such as leading Fatah figures selling concrete to the Israelis to build the wall. Suha Arafat and Rajoub had a monoploy on licensing cars which enabled them to operate a number of highly profitable "chop-shops".
What Arafat did not do was to direct the resources of the Palestinian people to building a Palestinian state for all the people. For years he had prevented the development of a multi-party society through the vicious application of the policy of Sumud. This opened up the way for Hamas which exploded on to the scene in violence directed at so-called collaborators. The UK Independent newspaper did an excellent and appalling photo-documentary of Hamas' exploits which showed how it used violence to exert power.
With friends like the "Friends of Palestine", the Palestinians hardly need the Israelis as enemies.

I hardly think that Blair is in any position to judge what is right or best for another country less than a week after he was questioned by police in the Cash for Honours fiasco and also accused of having lied to this country and Parliament regarding the WMD's in Iraq. He really ought to keep his opinions to himself and come home to sort out his own problems. Better still, if he had a shred of decency, he should come home and resign before he causes Labour to lose all credibility.

Bush also has no right to speak about fair elections following the problems he caused in the 2001 American elections. Many still believe he should not have become President.

I would imagine that these days many more wish he had not.As for Abbas, he should learn from his own history. The Palestinians are a very proud people who voted for Hamas in free and fair elections and I believe that if new elections are called by Abbas those same people will vote again for Hamas. The Palestinians have fought for and lost much since 1948 and I cannot see them giving in now to a 'puppet' of Israel.

If world leaders continue to refer to Hamas as terrorists they I see no reason why we should not also refer to Bush, Blair and Olmert as terrorists too, for they are responsible for thousands more deaths than Hamas could ever be.

It makes me sick to see how democratic elections are supported as long as the result is in line with what you want. The Palastinians chose Hamas, the democratic result, but then sanctions are applied which is strangling the Palastinians, trying to kill off Hamas. It was just the same in the cold war, when elections produced the "wrong" result, other nations promoted terrorism etc to undermine those elected leaders. Nothing has changed!!

Roger G.: If UK voted the BNP into power by a simple majority vote in the next election, would we expect the other EU nations and UN states to have full contact with UK? I suspect we would expect global condemnation. Hamas is basically no different to BNP, except the BNP has few funds and far less weapons.