So Very Clever

I wonder who wrote TNR's unsigned editorial on Hamas and what was going through his head when he wrote this:

A great debate has already begun on the subject of who lost Gaza. Increasingly, one hears that the Israelis did, or the Americans did; that the disaster is the consequence of Israeli policies or American policies, of Israeli harshness and American indifference. It is necessary to insist, therefore, that the primary responsibility for Palestinian actions falls on Palestinians. To believe the opposite is to hold a condescending imperialist view of the Palestinians as the passive objects of others; as nothing but the wretched playthings of power, of circumstances over which they have no control; as people in some way unqualified for history.

Could the author of those lines seriously expect a single person on the planet to regard TNR as the authentic voice of anti-imperialism west of the Jordan River? Obviously not. But so what's the point? It reflects, I think, a dangerous self-deception. The piece much more appropriately on a rancid note of smug condescension:

For many decades, the world has clamored for Palestinian self-determination. Well, the clamor can now cease. Palestinian self-determination is here for all the world to see. So is self-determination good news or bad news? It all depends on what is determined.

What the argument here is supposed to be, I couldn't quite say? Is a decades-long program of illegal settlement-construction really given retroactive legitimacy by the outcome of an armed struggle in June 2007? Would it really be "imperialist" of me to note that the self-fulfilling prophecies of the Israeli right have been the Palestinian rejectionists' best friend for a long time? Meanwhile, I don't want to say anything untoward, but the editorial has a remarkable way of not grappling at all with US policy, either forward- or backward-looking; of saying what, if any, American interests are in play here and how they might best be advanced.