Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

In "Bad Timing", which is subtitled: "Gaza could have been a model of the future Palestinian state. Instead, it is a place of repression and aggression," Christopher Hitchens gives the Israelis and the Palestinians a ticking off before addressing the "disgusting and squalid behavior of the Hamas gang".

"It knows very well that sanctions are injuring every Palestinian citizen, but — just like Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq — it declines to cease the indiscriminate violence and the racist and religious demagogy that led to the sanctions in the first place. Palestine is a common home for several religious and national groups, but Hamas dogmatically insists that the whole territory is instead an exclusively Muslim part of a future Islamic empire. At a time when democratic and reformist trends are observable in the region, from Lebanon to the Gulf, Hamas' leadership is physically and economically a part of the clientele of two of the area's worst dictatorships. (Should you ever be in need of a free laugh, look up those Western 'intellectuals' who believe that a vote for an Islamist party and an Islamic state is a way to vote against corruption! They have not lately studied Iran and Saudi Arabia.) Gaza could have been a prefiguration of a future self-determined Palestinian state. Instead, it has been hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood and made into a place of repression for its inhabitants and aggression for its neighbors."

With a typical flourish, he signs off: "But to see Hamas at work is to resolve that whatever replaces or follows Zionism, it must not be the wasteland of Islamic theocracy." Agreed.