Fatah and Hamas met once again to iron out a cease-fire between the two factions, apparently coming to grips that their last cease-fire of just one week ago was already destroyed when the two groups continued to fight anyways.  It’s what they do, after all.  Sorry if I’m being pessimistic about the chances here, but I prefer to call it realism.

Mr. Abbas is also trying to restore a cease-fire with Israel that reduced the number of rockets launched from Gaza into Israel. Israel responded to Hamas’s recent statements that it was ending the cease-fire, and to the subsequent increase in the rocket attacks, with air attacks on Hamas targets and on those believed to have ordered the attacks or to be conducting them.

Mr. Abbas says he views the rocket attacks as counterproductive, but Hamas defends them as either “resistance” to Israeli occupation or as responses to Israeli military actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

That’s just it.  Even though the Times doesn’t actually mention it, the rocket attacks never actually stopped.  The Hamas version of a cease-fire is just a piece of paper or spoken word attempting to persuade other nations and media outlets they want peace.  It’s a ruse.

It was, after all, Hamas who recently increased the already increasing number of rocket attacks in an attempt to draw Israel into the Hamas-Fatah conflict.  They want to divert attention away from Palestinians killing each other and act like they can act like civilized human beings.