Calling the outcome of the Palestinian parliamentary elections a "political earthquake", which seems to be the cliché du jour used to describe the election, seems to be an understatement, with "sea-change" a better term for capturing the enormity of what has just happened in Palestine. For not only is Palestine now controlled for the first time by another political party, Fatah having been thrown out of power by the voters after its forty year domination of Palestinian politics, but that nascent nation state is now controlled by a fundamentalist religious faction similar to that which rules in Teheran, a faction that is bent on the destruction of Israel, and which clearly aims to impose an Islamic rule of law in the West Bank and Gaza.

To make matters worse from the point of view of the Americans and the Israelis, both now must deal with Hamas, regardless of their knee-jerk comments to the contrary. While Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, is speculating that the peace process might continue through the good offices of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, this speculation assumes that he will remain in office, which considering the election results is quite debatable. His legitimacy has been all but destroyed, as has that of Fatah and by extension, the PLO, which is why Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and his Cabinet were forced to quit their posts even before the smoke had cleared. If the PM and his Cabinet were forced to give up the ghost, why should the fate of Mr. Abbas be any different? Also de-legitimized and rejected out right is the so-called "road map" for peace co-sponsored by the US: the vote was not just an anti-Fatah vote, and a vote against its corrupt and ineffectual ways, as well as those of the PLO itself, but was also quite obviously a rebuke of the Old Guard’s pursuit of peace with the Israelis. The Palestinian people are obviously frustrated with the glacial pace of peace negotiations, and are just as frustrated with the results so far of the on-again, off-again peace process, which Fatah, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have been pursuing for more than a decade. Now everything is stake, is at risk, even the Palestinian Authority, which entity was largely the creation after all of Fatah and the PLO.