In the wake of the Hamas victory in the Occupied Territories, Israel loudly announced that it would have nothing to do with the resulting government. That's interesting, because Hamas owes its very survival in large part to Israel. As Richard Sale accurately reported for UPI (no doubt when the usual media filters were unaccountably offline):

[A]ccording to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.

Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.

Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.

...According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.

According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini's Iran.

So the US supports the mujahedeen against the secular Soviets and we get al-Queda. Israel supports Hamas against the secular PLO and Israelis get a democratically elected terrrorist statelet on its doorstep. And with each downward spiral, our respective governments can count on its public to support them.

Those who take the most from the table
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the taxes are destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill
Speak to the hungry of wonderful Times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling difficult
For ordinary men.
--Bertolt Brecht

Mission accomplished.