Now that Israeli leader Ehud Olmert has nailed together a ruling coalition and can start work on his signature policy plan, a pullout from much of the West Bank, he has this much in his favor: What's left of country's hard right can't claim he has no mandate for withdrawal. Consider that cause for one and a half cheers. For as currently designed, Olmert's plan seems designed to leave Israel with its own version of an endless Ulster problem.

All together now: Oops! Oo-oops!

After the Palestinian elections, the chorus singing that refrain includes not only the Bush administration, Israeli intelligence analysts, the old leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian pollsters who were reassuringly wrong all the way through the exit surveys. The people most perplexed by the victory of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, may be Hamas' own leaders. An electoral mandate for governing was the last thing they were ready for, and they quickly sought someone else to do the job, or at least share it. Which is just one of the contradictions in a political contest where the true victors, it seems, are irony and confusion.