An old hand offers a balanced view of Gaza

Bad news: Hamas unbowed. Good news: Mitchell on the case.

Hamas still runs Gaza, says Robert Malley, the former Arab-Israeli affairs director for President Bill Clinton. That doesn’t mean the U.S. now needs to directly negotiate with them, but it might mean Washington should accept the need for others, maybe the Europeans, to try to engage with Hamas leaders. On the bright side, Malley is upbeat about Barack Obama’s choice of George Mitchell to take on the world’s most intractable conflict.

The New York Review of Books