US: muddled Hamas policy

Has there been a u-turn in US policy towards Hamas? 

A Vanity Fair article tells of an alleged US plot to create an armed force under Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan -- also known by the nom de guerre Abu Fadi -- in the wake of the Hamas victory on the 2006 Palestinian elections that took President George Bush's administration completely by surprise.

The idea seems to have been to back efforts by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to force Hamas to accept the international community's conditions on recognition of Israel, ending violence and accepting past agreements or to eject it from government and call fresh elections.  The leaking of these preparations in May 2007, according to the article, precipitated the Hamas takeover of Gaza, a spectacular own-goal.

Less than a year later, with the attempt to marginalise Hamas and exclude it from peace talks post-Annapolis clearly in tatters after recent events in Gaza, there are signs of a radically different policy.  For the past few days, negotiators from Israel, the United States, Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been talking at various times to Egyptian mediators about some kind of ceasefire or truce between Israel and Hamas. 

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert denies it, but many former security and military leaders have been advocating just this approach in the absence of any better Israeli options for dealing with rocket attacks -- and Gaza has gone very quiet in the meantime.  They are also possibly discussing a relaxation of the siege on Gaza and a prisoner exchange. 

If so, the situation on the ground -- and the overwhelming need to salvage Annapolis -- has overwhelmed US policy preferences, forcing it to go along with the Hamas-Fatah-Israel discussions.