They have the right idea. Although Hamas has offered amnesty to its political opponents, Gazans are unwilling to credit the offer. That’s not especially surprising. By now, few require edification about what Hamas means when it proclaims that the “era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived.” It means, for instance, that prisoners can expect the treatment afforded 28-year-old Muhammad Swairki, a cook for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard. After seizing Swairiki last week, Hamas fighters bound his hands and legs, then “freed” him in the following manner: by hurling him to his death from a 15-story apartment complex in Gaza City. Cases like these contribute to the minimum of 120 people who have been killed in the recent carnage unleashed by Hamas. Measured by the unebbing flood of refugees from Gaza, many Palestinians consider the era of Islamic justice and rule far more desirable in principle -- after all, they did vote to elect Hamas -- than in practice.

Abbas’s Fatah seems bent on capitalizing on that hard fact. While Hamas was crushing the remaining pockets of resistance in Gaza this weekend, Fatah forces moved to assert control over the West Bank. In his boldest move, Abbas expelled Hamas from the Palestinian Cabinet and decreed an “emergency government,” with himself in command. The ploy is clear enough: To send the message that Fatah, unlike its bloody-minded counterpart in Gaza, is a force for moderation and compromise; that it is the true representative of the Palestinian people; and that the international community’s assorted diplomats should address themselves -- and their aid packages -- to its offices.

Will it work? Fatah cannot be disappointed with the early evidence. Hardly had Abbas ousted Hamas from the Palestinian Authority this weekend than the American consul general in Jerusalem, Jacob Walles, turned up at Abbas’s headquarters in Ramallah to announce that the United States would suspend its economic embargo, a response to the election of Hamas in 2006, just as soon as the new emergency government is appointed. The European Union has similarly pledged to work with a Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. Even Israel is on board. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert kicked off his trip to the U.S. on Sunday by hailing the emergence of a new Palestinian government as a victory for peace. In Fatah, Olmert said, he saw “an opportunity that has not existed for a long time.”

What Olmert could have possibly had in mind is unclear. Proof of Fatah’s moderate credentials, which supposedly make it a credible partner for negotiations, is nowhere to be found. In his enthusiasm for Fatah, for instance, Olmert declined to mention that it remains an umbrella organization for terrorist factions committed to and, indeed, actively seeking Israel’s destruction. Just last Saturday, one of these factions, the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, launched an attack on an Israeli military post near Gaza using a jeep disguised as a television vehicle. The European Union has had its own runs-ins with Fatah terrorists. To take one recent example, in January of 2006, Fatah militants stormed the EU’s offices in Gaza after the publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammed in a Danish newspaper. One might think that such incidents would cast doubt on the popular narrative that Fatah represents the “peaceful” and “secular” alternative to Hamas. Instead, faced with two uninspiring choices among the Palestinian leadership, the international community has mistakenly invested its hopes in the one with better public relations.

Aside from being misguided, calls for negotiations with Fatah are a diversion from the more important work at hand. Now that Gaza has officially become “Hamastan,” emphasis should be placed on isolating Gaza. Properly, Israel has already taken action in that direction, declaring Gaza a “terrorist entity,” locking down the Gaza border, and deploying troops along its perimeter. Even more encouraging is a new report in the Times of London that Ehud Barak, now Israel’s defense minister, is considering an invasion of Gaza, with 20,000 troops, to lay waste to Hamas’s military capability. That still doesn’t address a central problem -- the smuggling of weaponry into Gaza across the porous Egyptian border -- but suggestions from senior Israeli military figures that IDF troops may be deployed along the Egyptian border indicate that Israel is at least serious about eliminating any potential threat from Gaza.

None of this will please Israel‘s hardened critics. In its latest policy brief, Amnesty International lays out what will likely be the theme of human-rights watchdogs who specialize in depicting Palestinians as blameless victims of Israeli injustice. Waving aside Israeli concerns about security, the group concludes that border closures, as “well as other forms of restrictions on freedom of movement of people and goods,” can under no circumstances be imposed “on whole communities.” Similarly, count on self-appointed global consciences -- a certain ex-president comes to mind -- to claim that Israel’s isolation of Hamas, rather than the campaign of terror that makes it imperative, is the true cause of conflict in Gaza.

But here is the good news: In the new security environment, these positions are unlikely to garner a substantial following. Most reasonable observers recognize that there are authentic threats to Israeli security and that no country could countenance an open border with a failed state presided over by terrorists. Both the United States and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist organization, and after a flurry gruesome reports about revenge killings and public executions in Gaza, none of the prominent players in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are ready to reconsider their view. No one wants to see undue suffering befall Gaza’s residents, of course, but in this instance the suffering is largely self-imposed. Unsettled though the future course of Palestinian politics remains, it seems clear how the civilized world is prepared to greet the Hamas terror state. In short: Bye, bye, Gaza.