I'm not even angry. Anger came and went a long time ago. No, Hamas's sudden rise to power January 25 just disappointed me. For you see, just about everyone who cares about Israel has this tantalizing dream, where an Israeli leader and a great Palestinian peacemaker spend weeks together, getting to know each other and negotiating a peace. The dream reaches its pinnacle when the two of them have a joint ceremony, Israeli and Palestinian flags intertwined, and declare a Palestinian state, economic cooperation, and, at long last, a time when parents can nurture their kids, rather than grieve for them. Then the two leaders leave, and the people they represent go their separate ways, tougher for the experience and deeply respectful of each other. Yasir Arafat put that dream on life support when he rejected Ehud Barak's offer at Camp David.

And now Hamas has pulled the plug. The disappointment I feel now is the disappointment of a dream dying.

It is almost certain that the negotiated settlement is now dead. For once, Israel and Europe agree about Israel's situation. Of course, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was clear, saying, "The state of Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian administration if part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel." He did not have to say that the same applied if Hamas ran the administration and was more than just "part of it." The Europeans, who until this time have been consistently critical of Israel, now agree. The German foreign minister said that those taking part in government and negotiation "must foreswear violence and recognize Israel's right to exist. This appears to be still a long way off for Hamas." British foreign minister Jack Straw said Britain would not deal with people who practice terrorism, as Hamas does. Even Javier Solana of the European Union echoed the sentiment, saying it would be "very difficult" for the European Union to even continue funding a Hamas run government, let alone negotiating with it.

All this, however, assumes that it is Israel or Europe's decision. Of course, it is not. Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by the European Union as well as Israel and the United States, will never sit down with people who they think have no right to exist. Alas, it is impossible to get past the central fact that, while Israelis are sworn to build a Palestinian state, Hamas is sworn to annihilate Israel's.

So the dream is dead. The New York Times, a doubtlessly sympathetic source, noted that "Israeli hard-liners have claimed that they had no negotiating partner [in the Palestinians.] That always seemed a debatable point, until now." Yet Israel still desperately wants a viable Palestinian state. It fears Palestinian territories in anarchy. It wants someone the world can hold responsible for terrorism, as Moammar Qaddafi is in Libya. And it wants someone who will provide jobs for Palestinians in the territories, which is as close to a final cure for terrorism as there is. Finally, Israel is sick of losing young men and women who are patrolling a people who hate it. Israel is now in that miserable position of picking the "least bad" option. So what comes next? I don't know. Unilateral withdrawal from the territories--free of any negotiation with the Palestinians--is gaining a lot of traction in Israel. Israelis now are thinking it is the only way to achieve their aim of a Palestinian state next door without getting caught up with a Palestinian government that had just been corrupt and is now sworn to their destruction.

Golda Meir, former Israeli Prime Minister, used to talk about how she could forgive the Palestinian Liberation Organization for killing civilians and for being an enemy in a "war," but she could never forgive them for making Israel lose its idealism. The same is true now for Hamas. Eventually, people who care about Israel can forgive it for the bombings, though that will take time. Eventually, we can forgive it for calling us "Jewish pigs," "baby-eaters," or worse. What we can never forgive in Hamas, though, is their rude obliteration of what some might call na?veté, but I prefer to call hope that we can do things better than they had ever been done before. Hamas, the terrorist organization cum political party, has done with an election what it could never do with bus bombs. It has murdered Israel's dream.