This report is illuminating:

Two top Hamas leaders made their first appearances at public events since Israel’s Gaza war on Friday, signaling defiance of rival Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as he discussed peace prospects with a U.S. envoy.

“We cannot, we will not, and we will never recognize the enemy in any way, shape or form,” Mahmoud Zahar, one of the two leaders, said in a mosque sermon broadcast on the Islamist movement’s radio station.

Yet the president says that the democratic election of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu hasn’t made peace prospects “easier.” Had Kadima prevailed we’d be so much further along the road to peace, I suppose. And George Mitchell is out giving a “stern warning” to Israel that the two-state solution is the only way forward. So much for the triumphant return of the realists to the helm of American foreign policy.