The Price of Victory

KHALIL HAMRA / AP

IN CHARGE Haniya, seen here at a Jabalya rally last week, has thus far proved long on fiery rhetoric and short on solutions

In January, Hamas stunned the world by winning a majority in Palestinian parliamentary elections, and on March 29 the militant Islamic group officially took power. That turned out to be the easy part: so far, instead of implementing its own agenda, the new ruling party has been scrambling to respond to the consequences of victory, particularly a freeze in funding to the Palestinian government by the U.S., the E.U. and some of its members.

Throughout Gaza last week, the difficulties of actually governing Palestinians could be seen everywhere. Forlorn workers from the Palestinian Economic and Development Authority, which...

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