The scoop went on to say that

Mahmoud Abbas’ close adviser, Jibril Rajoub, is holding secret talks with the Gazan Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad.

Broad influential circles in Fatah. . .criticize as shortsighted and destined to be short-lived Abbas’ policy of separating the West Bank from Gaza and boycotting Hamas.

This falling away of support for Abbas in his own movement throws further in doubt the US-Israeli strategy of putting all their Palestinian apples in his West Bank basket, as manifested in American dollars and Israeli concessions on security.

The article further refers to the “dim view of [this] process” in Israeli defense circles including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and notes that a key intelligence official told the relevant Knesset committee on Sunday that “the West Bank was the next Fatah-Hamas arena of conflict…and Fatah has no chance of standing up to Hamas there, any more than it did in Gaza. Abbas’ forces are completely dependent on the Israeli army to keep Hamas in check.”

By Wednesday the same tidings, more or less, had graduated to the lead story of the mainstream Jerusalem Post, with the headline “Fatah, Hamas said to be moving toward reconciliation” topping a report by Arab-affairs correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh. “Fatah and Hamas officials,” he wrote,

said Tuesday they are conducting secret talks in a bid to patch up their differences following Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip.

The revelation came less than 24 hours after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during their meeting in Jericho he had no plans to talk to Hamas….

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday he was prepared to step down to pave the way for the resumption of the Hamas-Fatah talks…. [He] told Palestinian journalists he was convinced it was only a matter of time before the two parties returned to the negotiating table.

As the “driving force behind the mediation efforts” Fatah officials named one Muhammad Jassem al-Saqer, “a Kuwaiti national and speaker of the Arab Parliament.” In other words, a top official from one of the purportedly “moderate,” “pro-Western” countries included in the Bush administration’s proposed major arms sale to Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf states.

Also pitching in is an old U.S. competitor: “Noting that Abbas had visited Moscow recently, [another Fatah] official said the Russian government had made it clear to Abbas that President Vladimir Putin was keen on resolving the crisis between the two parties.”

Meanwhile Fatah, talking behind the scenes to whomever it wanted about whatever it wanted including parties like Hamas and Russia, talked openly as usual to its Israel supplicants about its need for—more prisoner releases and more guns. In his Monday meeting with Abbas, the ever-compliant Olmert reportedly “promised to release more security prisoners”—the freeing of masses of convicted terrorists from Israeli jails having at all times been a basic demand of the allegedly moderate Abbas.

And on Wednesday, at the same time as the Jerusalem Post led with the abovementioned “Fatah, Hamas said to be moving toward reconciliation,” Haaretz’s English website featured—wouldn’t you know it, “PA presses for arms shipments said needed to stave off Hamas.” It seems that

Less than two months after Hamas tattered [Fatah] rule in the Gaza Strip…the Palestinian Authority—under Fatah leader Chairman

Mahmoud Abbas—is once more requesting large shipments of weapons, ammunition and armored vehicles.

This time, the PA is seeking Israel's approval for shipments from Egypt and Jordan. . . . Israel has not yet answered and has reservations about some of the requests.

One might hope so, since

The new Palestinian wish list includes armored cars, jeeps, machine guns, several thousand rifles plus millions of rounds, bullet-proof vests, stun grenades and additional combat gear. The PA argues that it needs weapons to preserve Fatah’s rule and to deal with coup attempts by Hamas…. [The Palestinians] are relying, among other funds, on an $80 million grant that the United States had recently granted the PA’s security forces .. . .

Jerusalem's reservations pertain primarily to the armored cars.... Israel had already allowed then PA chairman Yasser Arafat to operate several such armored vehicles following the Oslo Accords of 1993. They were later destroyed by the Israel Air Force after the second intifada erupted in September 2000.

Abbas’s game is clear enough: milk the Israelis and Americans for whatever you can get, meanwhile keep building your intra-Arab and international alliances. What is less clear is how the elected officials of the world’s last two fighting democracies can keep buying the same moonshine, indulging their Fatah-fetish again and again by building and rebuilding this fundamentally anti-Israeli, anti-Western terror organization until the next debacle.