Palestinian reconciliation: Nudge it along

The West and Israel, for their own good, should encourage Palestinians to get together

"AMID the joy of the Arab awakening, the most stubbornly insoluble of all the Middle East’s problems, the argument between Jews and Arabs over the Holy Land, seemed almost forgotten and perhaps better shelved for the next few years. No more. The upheavals elsewhere in the Arab world are affecting even the Palestinians—and by extension the Israelis. On May 4th the two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, bloodily at odds for many years, signed an historic agreement to support a national-unity government in the Palestinian territories: the Gaza Strip, now ruled by Hamas, and the West Bank, ruled by an authority under the sway of Fatah" (thanks Cheryl)