Collective punishment of the Palestinians

And this time its the EU and US doing the punishing according to head of Hamas's political bureau, Khalid Mish'al in today's Guardian:

The day Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections the world's leading democracies failed the test of democracy. Rather than recognise the legitimacy of Hamas as a freely elected representative of the Palestinian people, seize the opportunity created by the result to support the development of good governance in Palestine and search for a means of ending the bloodshed, the US and EU threatened the Palestinian people with collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives.

Meanwhile, highlighting the EU and the US's hypocrisy on this issue Israel killed a 9 year old girl in "free" Gaza two days ago. She was the second child to be killed by Israel in a week. See here.

And here's a letter in today's Guardian pointing up the cleft stick that our own government is in now, through it's uncritical support of Israel, it has driven the majority of Palestinians under occupation to support Hamas:

Under the terrorism bill will it now be an offence to support a democratically elected government?
Nigel Hunt
Harrogate

Good question.