The last week has been a period of grace, of partial freedom for the 1.4 million residents of the large open-air prison also known as Gaza. Last Wednesday, Hamas activists apparently blew up the border barriers between Gaza and Egypt, and by morning it was a free-for-all. Gazans, used to being blockaded into 360 square kilometers, turned the Egyptian border towns of Rafah and El Arish into an impromptu and unlikely shopping mall/holiday resort. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of Gazans streamed into the Egyptian Sinai to stock up on basic goods and supplies, to visit family, and to enjoy a respite from the claustrophobia of Gaza.

The congressional leadership and the White House have just reached a deal over war spending that drops a timetable for withdrawal and focuses instead on benchmarks that the Iraqi government should meet. At the same time, the president has further rubbed the Democrats' collective noses in mud with a speech given at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, wherein he delivered a new version of the spurious accusation that opposition to the war in Iraq is tantamount to support for al-Qaeda.