The Vacation President

Griff Witte wrote in yesterday's Washington Post: "Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday suspended peace talks with Israel following a spasm of violence in the Gaza Strip that has left more than 100 Palestinians dead since Wednesday as Hamas has continued its campaign of rocket strikes."

Helene Cooper wrote in yesterday's New York Times: "Ever since the militant Islamist organization Hamas took over Gaza eight months ago, President Bush's peace plan for the Middle East has been to prop up the more moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in the hopes that Palestinians would rally behind him as man who could bring them statehood and make Hamas irrelevant.

"But Israel's military and economic pressure on Gaza, the menacing rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and the ensuing chaos that reached new heights this weekend have highlighted a fundamental tangle in that plan: As long as Hamas controls Gaza, it can subvert negotiations between Israelis and moderate Palestinians whenever it sees fit."

Jennifer Loven writes for the Associated Press: "The White House on Monday blamed the Palestinian militant group Hamas for causing the fighting between Israelis and Palestinians that has killed dozens and put a halt to peace talks."

Anne Gearan writes for the Associated Press: "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed hard Tuesday to resume Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, despite the chaos and violence of a week that saw both Palestinian and Israeli civilians killed.

"Walking away from talks plays into the hands of militants, the U.S. envoy said. She blamed Palestinian Hamas radicals for provoking an Israeli military onslaught in the Gaza Strip. The campaign has derailed an already troubled U.S-backed drive for peace terms this year."

And who made Hamas what it is today? In a highly controversial -- but amply sourced -- new article in Vanity Fair, David Rose writes that "[A]fter failing to anticipate Hamas's victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. . . . President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever."

Writes Rose: "Some sources call the scheme 'Iran-contra 2.0,' recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.'s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

"Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney's chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

"Wurmser. . . . believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand.'"

Opinion Watch

The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board writes: "It's hard to know which is the bigger smoking ruin: the battleground Palestinian turf of Gaza or White House peace-making in the Middle East."

The Washington Post editorial board writes: "The upsurge in fighting between Israel and Hamas over the weekend, and the resulting suspension of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, demonstrates again a crucial flaw in the Bush administration's Middle East strategy. President Bush, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have assumed that Hamas could be bottled up and ignored in the Gaza Strip while a deal for a Palestinian state was worked out. In fact, since the Annapolis conference three months ago, Hamas has repeatedly proved that it can disrupt the process and command the world's attention by firing rockets at Israeli cities and drawing the inevitable military response. . . .