Well, it's not exactly the two state solution that everybody contemplated. But, basically, what was supposed to be "Palestine" is now split under two tyrannical juntas. Actually murderous juntas. It is probable that, with the bloodshed of the last days, Hamas will be able to claim Gaza as its own. That's what the Israelis got for leaving Gaza two summers ago, a move on which I reported (here, here, and here) and which I fervently supported. Stupid me. For the moment, at least, the West Bank belongs to Fatah, and maybe much longer than "for the moment." But it is the West Bank with encumbrances: Israeli check-points, Israeli settlements, the Israeli security barrier, Palestinian collaborators, massive Palestinian corruption and, as I pointed out in my June 9 note on a book by Hillel Cohen, The Market Square is Empty: The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem, 1967-2007, Jerusalem is not and probably never will be the real capital of Palestine. This will not change an iota unless the unimaginable happens, which is that the Palestinians understand that they cannot have anything like a state unless they demonstrate over a long period of time that they are willing to live peacefully with their neighbors. Khaled Abu Toameh, the Jerusalem Post's top Palestinian affairs commentator, lays out in a column today the geographical rift between Hamas and Fatah. Condi Rice may propose, as she foolishly did a few weeks ago, that highway travel between Gaza and the West Bank be increased. I think she said "immediately." Within days of her sage recommendation, a truck plying its way across the Negev from the West Bank to the Strip was intercepted. And what did it have inside? Weapons, many weapons, small and large. The designation of Ehud Barak as the leader of the Labor Party will, whatever the long-term fate of the Olmert government, strengthen the realists in Israel. Once, Barak took Israel on a more pliable path. He and his country were rewarded with the second intifada. Once, not again.