World press
As the four powers comprising the Middle East Quartet - the EU, US, UN and Russia - prepare to hold an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss the Hamas victory in last week's Palestinian elections, the issue has come under intense scrutiny in their newspapers.
Many commentators call for a ‘wait and see’ approach, believing that the responsibility of government could force Hamas to adopt a more pragmatic and less hostile approach to regional politics.
However, some fear that the chances of peace between Israel and the Palestinians have diminished with the defeat of Fatah. And an American commentator calls into question US policy towards the Middle East.
Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
We should wait and see how the formation of a government in Ramallah proceeds and what kind of signals a new Palestinian autonomy government under the influence of Hamas sends out.
Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung
If Hamas takes on government responsibility, then the Islamists will eventually have to strive for talks.
Spain's El Pais
It cannot be ruled out that pragmatism will win out in the end.
UK's The Observer
It is conceivable that Hamas can mature into a responsible political organisation. To choose suicide bombing over diplomacy would be a betrayal of the Palestinian electorate, whose votes must be read as a protest against poverty, not a call to arms.
France's Le Monde
Hamas is just discovering the magnitude of the task which awaits it. Its officials have not discarded the idea of a government composed of 'technocrats in the service of the Palestinian people'. Such a move would reassure the international community, embarrassed by being in the position of having to finance a power dominated by a movement on the list of terrorist organisations.
France's Liberation
The leaders of Hamas, a handful of men living in semi-secrecy, hold a good part of the answers in their hands. They will very quickly have to make choices that will determine whether their victory sounds the death knell for the slight hopes for peace in the region or whether, paradoxically, it will strengthen the chances of it.
Spain's ABC
The Palestinians have made Hamas' victory a political storm that threatens to sweep away the fragile bases of institutional stability raised laboriously by Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas since his election.
Russia's business daily Kommersant
The Palestinian case showed that free elections may give power to forces other than those supported by Washington. These Palestinian elections resulted in a peaceful Islamic revolution, which changed the national system of political priorities to a religious one. Something like this already happened in 1992 in Algeria. The government there annulled the elections won by Islamists. It is unlikely that such a scenario will be repeated in the Palestinian autonomy.
Russia's Moskovskiy Komsomolets
The well-worn subject of a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may as well be forgotten for a long time. Hamas is terrorism. Terrorism is war... It is obvious that the emerging situation will bring peace to no-one: neither Palestinians nor their neighbours.
Russia's Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda
It is one thing to be in opposition and to appeal to the most disgruntled part of the population. It is something else altogether to be in power and to be able to use all its attributes. Besides, there is a desire among the moderate forces in Hamas to convince the world that their political organisation is far from synonymous with terrorism.
James Glanz in The New York Times
A Little Democracy or a Genie Unbottled - The overwhelming sense among politicians and intellectuals in the Middle East last week was that America's little chemistry experiment had blown up in its face. President Bush promoted democracy and free elections as his primary solution to the region's ills - and when Hamas won in a landslide in the Palestinian elections, the president got results that could not have been more inimical to the interests of the United States and its ally, Israel.
The president did not specifically rule out talking to a government of which Hamas is a part. Still, he did not sound entirely pleased that he had gotten what he wished for. And if democracy continues to produce results that are irksome to the United States, will other Americans call into question the export of their most glorious product, electoral democracy?