Do you remember the "Prisoner's Dilemma?" The classic game of philosophy and economic game theory involves 2 "players" who have a choice to make. Imagine our players are both being held (separately) on suspicion of a crime. The District Attorney makes each prisoner an offer: "Confess to the crime, and if your accomplice remains silent I'll let you turn state's witness and go free while your accomplice does the time." If both players confess, both will do time; however if both players remain silent, the prosecution will have nothing and both will serve minimal time on reduced charges.

The dilemma the prisoner's face is that either one will likely do better if they choose to confess, yet both will do better if they cooperatively remain silent. Unable to communicate however, neither player necessarily trusts the other and is likely to act in their own self interest, rather than the cooperative self interest and as such receive a worse outcome.

The Israelis and Palestinians seem to be locked in a Prisoner's Dilemma of their own right now over the governance of the Palestinian Authority. Both have a choice to make: work together and peacefully build a solution to one of the most vexing problems in the Middle East, or act alone and hope the other side stays silent. Like the prisoner's dilemma, each side has an advantage with their own constituencies if they choose to go it alone, but face huge difficulties if the other side chooses the same. Though working together will likely yield the most promising result, neither side trusts the other and as such is most likely to choose their own (temporary) self-interest at the expense of the better cooperative outcome.

Take for example the recent internecine fighting among the Palestinian factions. Hamas and Fatah, the two most important groups within the Palestinian territories have recently been clashing, violently, over ostensible control of the Palestinian authority. Currently Fatah, in the form of Mahmoud Abbas, controls the presidency of the PA and as such is seen to be Yassir Arafat's political heir. Hamas, however controls a majority in parliament and the Prime Ministership, and as such is currently seen as the rulers of the PA. Neither side has been willing to work with one another and have been involved in killing senior operatives of the other's faction in order to try to gain the upper hand. Clashes between Hamas and Fatah gunmen have killed 130 Palestinians since May, and cease-fires have repeatedly broken down. The latest fragile truce came Sunday, after four days of fighting killed 30 people.

In an attempt to end the factional fighting, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia arranged a summit meeting in Mecca (overlooking Islam's holiest shrine) between the three major players in Palestinian politics: Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas (Authority President), Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh (Authority Prime Minister), and Khaled Meshal, the exiled terrorist running Hamas from Damascas. The three agreed to a power-sharing agreement for the authority that should end the fighting, for now, however Abdullah's goals were more far reaching: He aimed to end the International embargo on financial aid to the Palestinians and thus gain recognition for the Hamas government.

Financial sanctions were imposed after Hamas failed to adhere to the main tenets of the Mid-East quartet. The quartet (The U.S., E.U., U.N., and Russia) have repeatedly stated that the Palestinian Authority must a. Renounce violence b. Recognize Israel, and c. abide by past Palestinian authority agreements. None of these basic tenets were agreed to in Mecca. Just prior to the summit, Islamic Jihad sent a suicide bomber into a bakery in the Southern Israeli resort town of Eilat, killing 3 innocent civilians. "A spokesman for Hamas praised the bombing as a natural response to Israeli military policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as its ongoing boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian government. 'So long as there is occupation, resistance is legitimate," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.'" As for recognizing Israel, Nizar Rayyan, a Hamas spokesman, was explicit. "We will never recognize Israel," he told Reuters in Gaza. "There is nothing called Israel, neither in reality nor in the imagination." Lastly, with regards to abiding by past PA agreements, "The platform agreed to Thursday says the new government pledges to "respect" previous deals, instead of "abide by" them, as Abbas initially demanded. It makes no reference to recognizing Israel or renouncing violence."

What Hamas is saying is that it wants International money aimed at easing the suffering of the Palestinians, however that it doesn't agree at all about how that suffering should be alleviated. While the world community has sought a peaceful two-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Hamas sees only one possible end to the violence: one Islamic state encompassing the current Palestinian territories and the whole of Israel. Any accommodations they might make in exchange for gains on the road to that aim are merely temporary. They are willing to "respect" past agreements for now, if it means an accommodation with Fatah and perhaps a resumption of International Aid, but as Fathi Hamas, a Hamas leader in Gaza's Jebaliya refugee camp told a few thousand supporters: "Our battle with the Israeli enemy is still on." He then urged militant groups to resume attacks against Israel, and denied that Hamas would respect past peace deals. 'We will be the spearhead of jihad ... to defend Palestine and Arab and Muslim nations,' he said."

The Prisoner's Dilemma has two implicit assumptions: 1.) That the players are unable to collude (ie. communicate) and that 2.) The players have the same goal (ie. to minimize incarceration). Clearly the Israelis and Palestinians have been able to communicate. In game theory, this would mean that the players would choose the cooperative course every time in order to maximize their benefits. The Palestinians have chosen to miss virtually every opportunity at cooperation, whether rejecting 97% of the pre-1967 lines at Camp David with Bill Clinton in 2000; by firing hundreds of Qassam missiles into Israel after it withdrew completely from the Gaza strip in 2005; and now by choosing not to abide by the very agreements with Israel that created the Palestinian Authority in Oslo in 1993. Unfortunately, as Hamas has made clear many times, its goals are not the same as for the Israelis. While Israel would like to see an endgame where a Palestinian state lives with it side by side in Peace, Hamas states clearly in its charter that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." That is an entirely different sort of dilemma.