Palestinian human bomb attack plays into Israel's strategy of isolation of Hamas et.al.

BBC:

The suicide bomb attack in Tel Aviv has precipitated a crisis which was probably inevitable at some stage during Hamas rule in the Palestinian territories.

The issue is how the new Israeli government and the new Palestinian leadership will deal with each other.

Nobody expects any political solution. It is the level of confrontation that has to be decided.

It appears that this time, the Israeli government, under the leadership of interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, is opting for containment.

It is holding Hamas responsible. Hamas called the attack "self-defence", though the bomber came from Islamic Jihad. Israel is thereby putting down a marker for the future.

But Israel is holding back from direct immediate military action.

It apparently wants to continue gathering international support for the diplomatic isolation of the Hamas government and this could be put at risk if the attention was on an Israeli military response.

And it wants to concentrate on what it intends to be the imposition of its own solution - the unilateral drawing of Israel's borders, keeping the whole of Jerusalem and the major settlement blocs.

...

Hamas continues to work itself into a more difficult position. It has manage to lose the charity of the US and the Europeans that have sustained the Palestinian community for 50+ years. Now it can't even get a bank to handle its funds if it had any. It thinks it can get charity from Islamic states, but where have the been for the last 60 years? Will their gifts be one time or will they be ongoing? The Palestinians main financial problem is that their main enterprise is a war they cannot win with Israel, where people work at productive jobs and have a real economy. The Palestinians control an area that could benefit from tourist dollars, but through their actions they have driven off any earned dollars from that enterprise.

They act as if they have an entitlement based on victimization, but that is not a bargaining chip. When it comes to bargaining with Israel, they are a people with nothing to offer, so it is not surprising that the Israelis will build a fence along a line convient to their defense and seperate themsleves from these miserable wretches.