Hamas has recently increased its public attacks on Mahmoud Abbas, and is reportedly consulting with other Islamist groups about declaring Gaza an independent state or emirate. Khaled Abu Toameh explains:
Abbas and the Palestinian Authority continue to seek the world’s help and support in establishing an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and eastern Jerusalem. But they are not telling the world how exactly they intend to achieve this goal, at a time when Hamas is consolidating its grip over the Gaza Strip and making plans to turn it into a separate state. . . .
If and when Hamas carries out its plan and establishes its own sovereign state, . . . the international community, primarily the U.S. and EU, will have to come to terms with the fact that the two-state solution has finally been realized; the Palestinians ended up with two states of their own—an Islamist emirate in the Gaza Strip and a PLO-controlled state in the West Bank.
The Americans and Europeans will also have to listen very carefully to what Hamas is saying: namely, that a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, or any part of the Palestinian territories, would not end its struggle to destroy Israel and replace it with the State of Greater Palestine.
Read more on Gatestone: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5576/hamas-state-palestine