December 4, 2007: Palestinian opinion surveys indicate that Hamas is very unpopular, with less than 20 percent of the Palestinian population supporting them. This is because Hamas was unable to maintain the economy in Gaza, and has refused to back down on its call for war with Israel, and the destruction of Israel. There is a debate within Hamas over this, but so far the hard-liners are winning. Fatah is trying to reform itself, since it now has higher (not by much) approval ratings than Hamas. Fatah is still corrupt and inept, at least compared to Hamas.

Meanwhile, Israel's war with Hamas continues. Israel has managed to maintain its intelligence network inside Gaza. That, and the heavy use of UAVs and electronic eavesdropping, has enabled Israel to regularly fire missiles at key terrorist personnel in Gaza. Several of these attacks are made each week, making it difficult for Islamic terrorist groups to organize attacks inside Israel. The best the Palestinians can do is fire home made Kassam rockets, and mortar shells from Gaza, into sparsely populated southern Israel. A half a dozen rockets and shells a day cause a few casualties a month, and some property damage. Far more Palestinians are killed or wounded as they fire, or attempt to fire, these weapons. Some Palestinians attempt to attack Israeli soldiers guarding the security fence around Gaza. These guys invariably get spotted and killed, but they keep coming, with one or more attacks a week.

Meanwhile, the peace talks in the U.S. (which were mainly concerned about the Iranian threat to the Arab world) resulted in Fatah agreeing to begin negotiations with Israel on December 12th. The Palestinians hope to get the deal they were offered in the Summer of 2000. That was turned down, and a terror campaign launched against Israel, in the hope of getting better terms. That war has killed nearly 6,000 people so far, about 80 percent of them Palestinians. Few Israelis have been killed in the last few years, since Israel developed tactics that kept the Palestinian terrorists out of Israel.