But this U.N. debacle is likely to lead to a precipitous decline in the prestige of the entire Fatah movement, a process that will only accelerate once a triumphant Netanyahu and despondent Abbas return home. We can expect widespread Palestinian demonstrations in Judea and Samaria in coming weeks, and they may be targeting both the Israeli and the Palestinian leadership.

In that way, Abbas’s diminishment will mean Hamas’s empowerment. The Hamas movement is the only player in the Middle East, aside from Israel, that has vocally opposed the current Palestinian statehood bid. Needless to say, this is not the kind of ally that Israel should be wishing for…

That sort of dependency may only increase as Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood partners becomes diplomatically ascendant in the region. Indeed, the most important political repercussions of this week’s U.N. diplomacy will not be felt in Jerusalem, but on places far outside of Israel’s control—namely, Cairo and Amman and elsewhere in the Arab world, as the masses there digest the scale of the Palestinian public humiliation and consider its consequences.