February 17, 2006: On closer examination, it turns out that terrorist group Hamas did not get a majority of the votes in the recent Palestinian elections. What did happen was that Fatah, the long established party, allowed many different Fatah candidates to run in many districts. Hamas only ran one candidate per district. The many Fatah candidates split the Fatah vote, allowing Hamas to win without a majority of the vote. But the majority of Palestinians appear willing to see how Hamas will do. Hamas is much less corrupt than Fatah, and has kept to the one year truce with Israel. The Fatah based terrorist groups have not observed the truce. So while Hamas still maintains its goals of destroying Israel, they are proving more reliable to deal with than Fatah, which says it wants peace, but continues to attack Israel despite agreeing to a truce. Fatah justifies this by maintaining that the still active terrorists are splinter groups that Fatah cannot control. That's sort of true, mainly because Fatah did not want to take the media and political heat for shutting down Islamic terrorist organizations.

February 16, 2006: If Hamas does not change its charter (to destroy Israel), Israel plans to channel most of the aid and money to independent Palestinian charity groups, not Hamas controlled Palestinian government. Gaza would also be sealed off.

February 16, 2006: Three more home made rockets were fired into southern Israel by Fatah backed terrorists. The Israeli "Red Dawn" early warning system spotted two of the incoming rockets, and Israeli artillery fired back at the launching sites.

February 15, 2006: Hamas has threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to get Hamas terrorists out of jail. This threat has been made before, but Palestinian terrorists have had a very difficult time carrying it out. However, it is considered an unfriendly act to make the threat.

February 11, 2006: Palestinian gunmen continue to skirmish with Israeli patrols in the West Bank.