"Me, I'm with God and a bag of flour."

So says a man known only as "Yousef" in Gaza today (he was afraid to give his full name). The same man comments about Hamas' Gaza victory by saying,

"Today, everybody is with Hamas because Hamas won the battle. If Fatah had won
the battle, they'd be with Fatah. We are a hungry people; we are with
whoever gives us a bag of flour and a food coupon,"

This is important to keep in mind when the inevitable images of Gaza draped in Hamas-green get spewed out on the news networks. Hamas sustains its popularity by being more adept at social services than Fatah ever was. Now long-term Hamas may not be the wisest choice for the Palestinians (they are something of an international pariah), however hungry people do not have the luxury of long-term thinking.

Gaza's "Riverbend"

Dennis Perrin stumbled on the blog of a Palestinian single-mother trying to raise her son in Gaza. I haven't really even had a chance to read it, but I'm interested already. If there's one benefit we can derive from blogs on a global scale, surely its that we can look beyond the talking points of Israeli settlers or Hamas or whoever the media goes to for a sound-bite.