The cause of the noble, suffering Palestinian has been one that inspires much anti-Israel, anti-American sentiment. Not taking sides here, just talking tactics (though some of you may assume that my saying a given side uses a tactic must mean I hate that side. Feh.)

So Hamas won the Palestinian elections, and Israel and the US immediately began withholding funds, later on giving those funds only to Fatah, the Hamas rival.

I saw this as a transparent attempt to divide the Palestinians. Good luck! I thought. But it worked! Palestinians were killing each other as I wrote this, in what is shaping up into a civil war. Many hands in Israel and Washington must be rubbing together in glee.

The impact of a Palestinian civil war could be profound. It's harder to justify your movement on the grounds of helping an oppressed minority when that minority are killing each other in a bitter power struggle.

Certain oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia draw both support and instability from the Palestinian cause. On the one hand it claims to help the Palestinians by braking Israel. On the other, the so-called 'street' Arab is angry with the regime for being so tight with the US and the West generally, oppressors of the Palestinians and polluters of culture.

The civil war in Iraq will be used by the GOP merely to justify cutting and running, because the Iraqis just "aren't worth it" -- but far more far-reaching and profound would be a Palestinian civil war, if the US and Israel can stoke the conflict long enough.