Gaza is now in the hands of Hamas and Palestine is reeling from the conflict. Hundreds of Gazans are gathered at the Eretz crossing to get to Palestine and the West Bank itself is falling into a crisis of authority. What is to come of Palestine?

The LA Times mourns the rise of “Hamastan” in Gaza: “This outcome is further evidence that President Bush has spent six years allowing a terrible foreign policy problem to grow unimaginably worse.”

Fouad Ajami says that the “Palestinian ruin was a long time in coming. No other national movement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the last half-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and the senseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms with their condition and their needs.”

Rich Lowry argues that Sharon gave the Gazans a kind of pharmicon, a poison pill that could cure or kill: “Sharon adopted the principle of giving the Palestinians what they wanted — good and hard. He left Gaza, leaving the Palestinians who had blamed the occupation for their failings to stew in their own toxic politics and, last week, to rip asunder any hope of a Palestinian state.”

Haaretz calls for an immediate opening of the Erez crossing: Many Israelis…see hundreds of haunted and frightened women and children crowding into the corridor of the Erez crossing and asking to be allowed to flee Gaza through Israel to the West Bank in order to save their lives. But the defense establishment sees something else: It sees wanted terrorists about to blow themselves up and Iranian agents…The pictures at the Erez crossing remind any person who still tries not to forget harsh scenes of locked, sealed gates from the previous century.”