Palestinian Elections by January 24?

It's hard to know where to begin here. Egypt has been pushing hard to bring to fruition the tentative agreement between Hamas and Fatah on a reconciliation agreement and new Palestinian elections in both the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority's dubious decision to ask to defer a UN vote on the Goldstone Report torpedoed the agreement, at least from Hamas' point of view, but Egypt has been arguing that it can't wait forever and that Hamas is dragging its feet. Now Mahmoud ‘Abbas says he'll call new elections, as constitutionally required, by January 24.

Is this good news or bad news? Hard to say, but if Hamas refuses, it's meaningless news. An election only in the West Bank achieves little. (Well, if Hamas won, I might amend that, but I wouldn't expect that result if the PA is running the show.) The Egyptian reconiciliation process seemed to be within sight of success until the whole Goldstone postponement thing came up, and I fear that US pressure had something to do with that.

Okay, Peace Process 101, my version:

1. You can't have a peace process without some sort of united Palestinian negotiating team.
2. You can't credibly negotiate borders with Israel if the West Bank and Gaza are two separate (but not truly independent) entities.
3. Fatah and Hamas either have to work together, or there is no way to achieve both 1) and 2).
4. Fatah and Hamas seemed to be coming close to an agreement: the Egyptians were laboring hard, and the Damascus Hamas leadership seemed more on board than the Gaza leadership, for a while, and then the whole Goldstone debacle blew it out of the water.
5. Egypt is clearly leaning on Hamas, but that can cut both ways.
6. Does any of this matter if Netanyahu doesn't have a massive road-to-Damascus conversion?

I'm still not sure if an arbitrary January 24 deadline is a good or bad augury.