Posted on 08/11/2004 8:18:03 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Once feared for its deadly suicide attacks in Israel, the Islamic militant group Hamas these days is but a shadow on Palestinian streets it once ruled with Kalashnikovs and the Quran.
Its key leaders are dead, slain by Israeli missiles. Its fighters are on the run from Israeli armor and infantry. Once capable of devastating attacks, it's been reduced to lobbing crude, homemade rockets at Jewish towns and settlements around the Gaza Strip.
But Hamas is likely to regenerate, because the underlying reasons for its popularity haven't changed. The absence of peace negotiations and a Palestinian economy decimated by war have served to entrench the Hamas ideal of solving the Middle East crisis through violence. Without hope, the 1.2 million Palestinians who live on the Gaza Strip see no other solution.
In summer camps across the coastal strip, children don T-shirts glorifying the death last spring of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin. They're the only overt signs of the deadliest militant group operating in territories that Israel occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Behind the scenes, Hamas gunmen still have enough money to pay $7 a bullet to arms merchants. Ordinary Palestinians still speak in admiring tones about Hamas, an Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement. They brag among themselves about the group's gun, bomb and missile attacks as though talking about the local soccer team scoring goals.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Wow, the media sure can play a mean violin for Hamas.
Proof that Israel isn't killing nearly enough of them.
You've got to see this.
at 7$ a round I ought that ammo is selling at literally 70 times what it costs in the US.
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