Asked if Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should send security personel and other officials to take over administration of Gaza, 65 percent said yes. The poll was published in July by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and its senior fellow, David Pollock.

Yadlin argues that Israel should encourage what the Palestinians say they want. Specifically, Israel should halt its attack on Gaza if Hamas agrees to accept an Egypt-brokered cease-fire that would install a unity government, schedule early elections and commit to a demilitarization of rockets and other heavy weapons in Gaza. My colleague Jackson Diehl made a similar argument in an important piece in The Post this morning.

Yadlin lists three basic elements of this strategy: An Israeli decision that Hamas must go and its military capability must not be rebuilt; an Israeli rejection of a limited strategy of trading “quiet for quiet”; and an endorsement of the Palestinian Authority’s return to power in Gaza. With this kind of framework, he argues, it might be possible to gain European, Arab and American support for a Marshall Plan-style effort to rebuild poor, tragic, devastated Gaza after so many years of intermittent war.