Not everyone is happy

But Gilad Shalit is going home. In Israel there has been a great deal of debate about the rightness of the deal with many arguments on both sides. 1,023 Palestinians arrested for terrorism seems rather a large number. Not only is that 1,023 potential terrorists but the whole deal may well encourage Hamas to indulge in more kidnapping of soldiers that was, let us not forget, with the killing of several other members of the IDF. On the other hand, the Israeli government has demonstrated that it cares for every single one of the country's citizens. A hard one to take sides on.

No-one ever accused Hamas of being diplomatic

Ismail Haniya, Hamas Leader and periodic Prime Minister of the Gaza strip, depending on your point of view, has managed to annoy the government of the new country of South Sudan as well as let the cat out of the bag (not that it was ever much in that bag) about Hamas's attitude to Israel and the creation of the Palestinian state.

According to a report published by the daily Sudanese newspaper Al-Ahdath last week, Haniya was delivering a Friday prayer sermon on 30 October when he described South Sudan as a “foundling state” as he strongly advocated the view that Palestinians should seek to establish their state through armed struggle not at the UN General Assembly.

“We have not heard in history that states were established through international resolutions, even this foundling state in South Sudan, which was severed from Sudan’s main homeland, did not come to exist through a UN resolution but rather through fighting and agreements,” he was quoted.

Haniya further said that establishing a Palestinian state with its capital Jerusalem is the goal of all Palestinian people, stressing that it is not acceptable that a Palestinian state be established in exchange for ceding a span of the hand of Palestinian territories.”

“We support the establishment of a Palestinian state on liberated territories but without recognizing the [Israeli] occupation,” he added.

Reacting to his statement, the government of South Sudan expressed regret and denunciation over Haniya’s remarks.

The head of South Sudan’s diplomatic mission in Egypt, Farmina Makueit, described Haniya’s statement as “irresponsible” and called on him to apologize to South Sudanese people.

Will he be criticized by the Guardian? Just asking.

So who is in charge?

For some time now whenever somebody starts talking about a two-state solution in the Middle East I have felt it necessary to point out that while that might have worked back in 1949 when the Arabs refused to co-operate, we have moved well beyond that in the last 50 years. Nothing short of a three-state solution could work and even that is looking dicy.

News from Gaza City confirms my view on the subject. It would appear that about 10 officers of the Hamas police raided a bank and demanded either 1 million Israeli shekels (c. $270,000) as the Jerusalem Post reports, or 1.5 million (c. $400,000) as Reuters tells us.

The money had been frozen by the Palestinian Authority, nominally the government of Gaza, last July.

The seizure, which Hamas said was backed by an order from a Hamas-run court, was the latest power play by the radical Islamic group, which violently took control of the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Fatah in 2007. Since then, Abbas's Palestinian Authority has governed only the West Bank. Efforts to reconcile the two sides have failed.

Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman Ehab Ghussein confirmed money was taken and said a court ruled the block on the funds was illegal.

The funds were intended for an association called Friends of the Sick, which has run a medical center in Gaza for over a decade.

The Palestinian Authority, which used to fund the group, froze the money after the organization elected a Hamas-dominated governing board in July 2009, the group said.

"This was based on entirely political considerations that have no relationship to the association's charitable work," the group said in a written statement.

Naturally, the Palestinian Monetarian Authority (PMA) takes a somewhat different view from the Hamas court and police. According to it, the action was "sinful".

Ehab Al-Ghsain, spokesman for the Hamas-run Interior Ministry, said Monday's move was "the implementation of a judicial decision." The association had "resorted to court after the Fatah government froze its account in the bank," he said.

Jihad al-Wazir, the governor of the PMA, has announced that the banks in the Gaza Strip, who are nominally under the PMA's jurisdiction will stage a strike on Tuesday to protest the raid. One cannot help feeling that this is somewhat more serious than the various reasons the various striking unions in Britain produce.