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How should Israel respond? Yisrael Medad, Dore Gold, Shlomo Avineri, Uzi Arad and others comment. Gershon Baskin: Hamas's victory is bad for Israel and bad for Palestine, but it is the voice of the people of Palestine. They have made their choice, and it was not just a choice of protest against Fatah, the PA and corruption. The vote reflects an attitude that negotiations produced nothing and violence brought about Israel's disengagement from Gaza. There is no guarantee that Hamas will go through a process of moderation, although new voices are being heard there. Israel cannot enter into any dialogue...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The leadership of Hamas, the paramilitary organization that was unexpectedly swept to power in the Palestinian elections last week, appears to have modulated its rhetoric. But is it ready to rule?     The Islamic resistance group will have to put together a new government even as it faces a possible cascade of crises:     •Can Hamas unite and control the deliberately fragmented security forces created by the now-deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat?     •How will it fund the nearly $1.6 billion annual budget without assistance from the already disenchanted World Bank and wary Western donors?     •What kind of...

Hamas’ victory sets precedent for Arab democracy By Nadim Ladki ‘It is truly the first peaceful change of power of such fundamental proportions in the Arab history’ HAMAS’S stunning Palestinian election victory this week signals that democratic change is possible in the Arab world, even if the United States might not be pleased with the outcome of an idea it has championed. The Islamist movement is poised to form the next Palestinian government after winning 76 seats in the 132-member parliament to end Fatah’s 40 years of political dominance in an electoral power shift that has no precedent in modern...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 (UPI) -- A confidential Saudi report prepared just weeks before the Palestinian elections predicted a Hamas victory in Gaza and the West Bank and puts the blame on the United States: "By failing to strengthen (President Mahmoud )Abbas's position, the U.S. has paved the way for a Hamas victory," states a document prepared by the Saudi National Security Assessment Project. "Moreover, the U.S administration's faith in the power of elections to transform people makes it oblivious to the possibility that the democratic process is often a double-edged sword which can have unintended consequences," goes on to say...

If the government of Israel gives the rabbis of Israel the opportunity to act for peace within the inter-religious field, perhaps we will be granted peace with Islam, which is so needed for this holy land. The entire world will be grateful to us for that. ____ Is peace possible with Islam? The question that I wish to pose is the opposite: Is peace possible without Islam? Ever since the beginnings of Zionism, the best of Israeli thought has dealt with the question of how to live in peace with the reality in a country surrounded by another nation -...

[JURIST] A senior Hamas official speaking in Jerusalem has said that introducing Islamic sharia [Wikipedia backgrounder] as “a source of law” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be "the No. 1 thing we will do" when Hamas takes up its seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council [official website] after the its shock victory [JURIST report] in Palestinian parliamentary elections earlier this week. Sheik Mohammed Abu Teir, who ran as the number two candidate on the Hamas ticket and who previously spent some 25 years in Israeli jails told a Canadian reporter “[s]haria has a soul in it and...

Hamas just won big in "Palestine," capturing an outright majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council election (about 58%), backing up over five years of opinion surveys that "Palestinians" like their suicide bombers toasted. Or, put another way, they like killing Jews. Yet by contrast, in March 1933, Hitler's National Socialist German Workers Party only won a plurality of the vote with 43.9% and needed a small right-wing nationalist party, the German National People's Party to form a coalition government with a slim 51.8% parliamentary majority. More Arabs in "Palestine" voted for Hamas than Germans for the Nazis. Think back to...

GAZA CITY, 29 January 2006 — Hamas yesterday rejected as blackmail a Western threat to cut financial aid to Palestinians if the group did not renounce violence. Hamas leaders said the Palestinian resistance movement would not disarm, would instead raise a Palestinian army from armed militias to protect Palestinian territories and people and honor existing accords and treaties. Armed supporters of Fatah, the party defeated in Wednesday’s legislative election, stormed Parliament buildings here and in Ramallah while some policemen joined them. “This aid cannot be a sword over the heads of the Palestinian people and will not be material to...

Hamas' victory in the Palestinian Authority legislative elections has everyone asking "what next"? The answer, and whether the result should be seen as a good or bad thing, depends very much on who is asking the question. Although a Hamas success was heavily trailed, the scale of the victory has been widely termed a "shock." Several factors explain the dramatic rise of Hamas, including disillusionment and disgust with the corruption, cynicism and lack of strategy of the Fatah faction which has dominated the Palestinian movement for decades and had arrogantly come to view itself as the natural and indisputable leader....

Can anyone be surprised Palestinians went against the status quo this week in their historic election? The success of Hamas in the Palestinian elections shocked many analysts but appeared inevitable to those who were watching closely. Fatah has long been discredited by corruption and general mismanagement. Israeli unilateralism and the mainstreaming of Sharon as a peace hero in the face of a helpless P.A. was bound to cause Palestinian protest at the ballot box. American silence has allowed Israel to take more land, build more settlements, and construct the aberration Palestinians know as the Apartheid Wall. The light at the...

The little jihad went on for years, and the world considered it Israel's problem. Now it has spread. Since Oslo was signed at the White House on that bright September day in 1993, Israeli politics has lurched leftward. Ariel Sharon's transformation is often considered emblematic of this. Ehud Olmert's own journey, as illustrated by his Herzliya speech this week has been, if anything, more dramatic than Sharon's. Though Sharon founded the Likud by convincing Menachem Begin to join forces with other parties on the Right, Sharon himself was a disciple of David Ben-Gurion, and was clearly shaped by the gritty,...

Palestinian Minister Muhammad Dahlan of Fatah and Hamas Leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar Debate on the Eve of Legislative Council Elections The following are excerpts from a debate between Palestinian Authority Minister of Civil Affairs Muhammad Dahlan and Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar, which aired on LBC TV on January 22, 2006. TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1008. Hamas Leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar: "The Palestinian Authority is responsible for the anarchy in security, because the PA is responsible for security. If it is not capable of maintaining security, it bears the responsibility." […] "An authority that relies on prisons does not represent the Palestinian...

In the run-up to the Palestinian elections, Hamas members in the Palestinian Authority began to make relatively pragmatic statements, while continuing to make extremist statements. According to media reports, Hamas has retained a media consultant to improve the movement's image - though Hamas claims that the consultant was hired to provide technical advice on enhancing contacts with the media [1]. It should be noted that the relatively pragmatic statements were made by Hamas members involved in the elections, and not by the movement's central leaders, who live abroad. These leaders, in particular political bureau head Khaled Mash'al, emphasize continued resistance...

GAZA, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army leadership has decided to prevent leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) from traveling between Gaza Strip and West Bank, Israeli Radio reported Saturday. The decision came following the landslide victory that was achieved by the movement in the second Palestinian parliamentary elections held on Jan. 25, Israeli security sources were quoted as saying. The sources told the radio that the Israeli army leadership issued orders not to allow the Hamas leaders who are the new members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), to transport from between Gaza Strip and west Bank....

Hamas: Separate classes for girls and boys JERUSALEM -- The incoming Hamas government will move quickly to make Islamic sharia "a source" of law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and will overhaul the Palestinian education system to separate boys and girls and introduce a more Islamic curriculum, a senior official in the movement said yesterday. Spelling out the domestic agenda of Hamas for the first time since the group's stunning victory in a legislative election this week, Sheik Mohammed Abu Teir also said Hamas would not go to foreign donors on bended knee if they withdrew aid to...

Following violent protests by Fatah activists over the weekend throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has called off a planned visit to Gaza out of fear for his life, PA officials said on Saturday. Abbas, under growing pressure to resign following his party's humiliating defeat in last week's parliamentary election, was scheduled to travel from Ramallah to the Gaza Strip for talks with Hamas leaders on the formation of a new cabinet, but decided to cancel the visit for security reasons, one official told The Jerusalem Post. The Fatah demonstrators, who set fire to...

Yesterday we awoke to a new reality: Hamas is the official leader of the Palestinian Authority and - thanks to the US and Israeli governments - the official representative of Arab Jerusalemites. If before Wednesday's poll Hamas concentrated its efforts in conducting its terror war against Israel and indoctrinating Palestinian society to support jihad, now the terror group will continue with its previous activities as the official, popularly elected government of the Palestinian Authority. Hamas's rise to political leadership and the significance of its ascendancy for Israel must be understood on two levels. First, Hamas must be viewed in the...

She has encouraged three of her sons to die attacking Israel, and would be proud if the other three followed suit. She appeared in a video with her youngest boy, Mohammed, 17, telling him not to return alive from a suicide mission. Now she is a democratically elected Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. On the electoral rolls, she is listed as Maryam Farahat. To Palestinians she is known as "the mother of the struggle". To Israelis, however, she is the mother only of a deadly, terrorist brood - and a political travesty. Her home in Gaza has become...

The Hamas landslide was not a suprise to everyone. When Yasser Arafat finally keeled over last year (thanks be to Allah) it left a power vaccum. Sharon's giving away Israeli townships really iced the deal. Some have suggested that Sharon knew what he was doing and this is precisely what he wanted... to reveal the terrorists' facade. I am not sure whether he anticipated this or not. Anyhow... Israel is currently in a war. It is akin to a war of beseigement like was practiced upon cities regularly until about a century ago (with even a few recent examples). When...

In Gaza, Farahat is known as Um Nidal, or Mother of the Struggle — a mother who sent three of her six sons on Hamas suicide missions against Israeli targets... She is most famous for her presence in a Hamas video, showing her 17-year-old how to attack Israelis and telling him not to return. Shortly afterward, he killed five students in a Jewish settlement before he was killed himself.