“Every Palestinian group that talks with the Government of Israel does thereby recognize the State of Israel in practice.
“In the past, that applied to the PLO. The same way, it applies now to Hamas.”
For more information on the Palestinian elections, see here, here and here.
Leading Israeli journalist Amira Hass expresses the sentiment of the election:
“The elections taking place today in the Palestinian Authority are fluctuating between two poles: The Israeli occupation and its tremendous involvement in Palestinian lives, and the responsibility that the occupied have for their own lives. The world, led by Israel, loves to forget that the Palestinian parliament and government, despite their respectable name, are not state institutions, and that the PA enclaves are not independent.”