In all the predictable circles, including the New York Times editorial column, Israel is taking the brunt of criticism for the Hamas takeover in the Gaza Strip.

According to this view, a sufficient supply of Israeli generosity to Mahmoud Abbas in the lead up to the takeover would have provided the president of the Palestinian Authority with a winning political argument: Moderation pays in the currency of Israeli concessions.

Actually, figuring out how Palestinians react to specific Israeli policies and actions is rather less scientific. Some Palestinians spin Israeli concessions as vindication for a policy of “steadfastness” and “resistance” — code for terrorism and for Palestinian political maximalism and inflexibility.

Thus, the unilateral disengagement from Gaza could be viewed as manifesting an Israeli desire to separate from Palestinians and the occupation — indeed Ariel Sharon specifically spoke in exactly those terms. But it could also be, and was, spun by Hamas as an expression of Israeli weakness and fatigue.

This argument has followed the Israel-Palestine issue since at least the failed Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. Israeli flexibility between 1992 and 1993 had yielded a shift on the part of the Fatah. In any event, the Fatah was bereft of a superpower backer and had alienated Arab states by backing Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

The interim arrangements that emerged in the 1990s allowed the Palestine Liberation Organization to establish itself in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. But Palestinian behavior undercut peaceful rhetoric. When the former chief of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, and Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Barak, joined President Clinton at Camp David, the stage was set to take a leap forward into a permanent settlement or to sink back into conflict.

The debate over what happened began as Arafat stormed out and the summit collapsed. Mr. Clinton fingered Arafat for having turned down Mr. Barak’s magnanimous offer. Others stretched themselves into daring gymnastic positions in order to put the onus back on Israel. That same debate keeps resurfacing in different forms.

It is high time to grant Palestinians the respect they deserve. They are not merely a shadow reacting to Israeli movement. They are the principal authors of their own destiny. If Prime Minister Olmert, who met with President Bush this week, was upon taking office filled with doubts about the utility of doing business with Mr. Abbas it wasn’t out of a desire to undercut the possibility of moderation but because he was besieged with intelligence of just how little Mr. Abbas mattered.

In fact, Israel has less diplomatic room to maneuver than doves pretend it does, though more than some hawks assert. Pro-Israel doves must disabuse themselves of the idea that the Middle East can be effectively reshaped by one swift Israeli concession of lands beyond the 1967 lines. Pro-Israel hawks must disabuse themselves of the idea that the Middle East can be effectively reshaped with one swift Israeli military victory. Israel statecraft must maneuver between those two poles.

Realistic goals for Israel — and even these are quite difficult to achieve — include forging a policy with America that aims to cut Syria loose from Iraq and Iran without sacrificing Lebanon, and to limit the damage in the Palestinian Authority areas.

I am reminded of the advice offered by Nicolas Sarkozy, now president of France, last fall. In a September 12, 2006 column in the Sun, I quoted Mr. Sarkozy as saying Israel should be “more proactive,” because “when you are small, you must be swift.” He also advised Israel “never to be the aggressor, and never to be caught standing still.”

For Mr. Abbas, the jig is now up. He has been forced into doing what he so long avoided: confront Hamas on military terms. Egypt and Jordan have long sought to co-opt their Muslim fundamentalists by creating a small political space in which they can operate.

Along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan repeated that strategy with regard to Hamas, trying to broker agreements between the Palestinian factions. That had the effect of reducing Fatah in Arab eyes to just another warring faction.

The latest attempt was the Mecca Accord engineered by Saudi Arabia. It resulted in the short-lived “unity” government in which Hamas and Fatah shared power.

The way to triumph over these tendencies is to begin by recognizing that the fight against this form of Islamic extremism is a fight to the death.

Instead, though, Arab states and some Palestinians are already tempted by a desire to avoid further confrontation and to re-negotiate a deal with Hamas. But they must take the current example of the Lebanese government with regard to the extremists operating within Palestinian refugee camps.

Hamas must be isolated and contained with an eye toward removing it from power and crushing its military force. The tactical steps required to accomplish these goals are clear enough to anyone who understands the critical issue. The very real extremists cannot be tolerated, and the relative moderates must be empowered.

Mr. Twersky is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.