Free Republic

Abdelhaleem Ashqar is facing trial in Chicago, accused of funding terrorists, and is under house arrest in Virginia. But he said Thursday that won't keep him from seeking to replace Yasser Arafat as the next Palestinian leader. Proclaiming that he detests bloodshed, Ashqar said he will run in the Jan. 9 Palestinian election as an independent and was able to collect 7,000 to 8,000 election petition signatures in less than 36 hours from his district of Putulkarm, in the northern part of the West Bank. Under house arrest at his home in Alexandria, Va., the former Howard University professor said...

Plast-inian, the PLASTIC language of the Arab Muslim 'Palestinians' - PLASTINIAN - Whether the (so called) 'Palestinian' Arab Muslims are a "nation" that is 39 years old (since 1967) or a bit more than that or even if you believe that they are just another group of Arabs, one thing is certain, they have contributed some vocabulary, Take some PLASTINIAN lessons: Hamas' terrorists greed for higher salaries (2006) = "starving Palestinians". Killing it's own people (like Muhammad Al Dura 2000, Rafah 2002 in a cave & now Gaza beach 2006) = "israeli aggression". Arab settlers (at the 1800's and their...

Call it humour with a fundamentalist twist. Jokes poking fun at Hamas and looking ahead to life under the Islamic militant group have been making the rounds via cellphone text messages Palestinians have been sending each other since it crushed the Fatah faction in a January 25 election. "Hamas stopped all suicide bomber operations ahead of the election, because they needed every vote they could get," read one popular joke. Hamas carried out nearly 60 suicide bombings in Israel since the start of a Palestinian uprising in 2000. But the group has largely abided by a cease-fire Palestinian President Mahmoud...

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.

Fatah Gunmen Kill Leader Ahead of Vote By ALI DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer Palestinian gunmen linked to the ruling Fatah movement killed one of their party leaders Tuesday, increasing tensions on the eve of parliamentary balloting and raising doubts about a new pledge by armed groups in the West Bank and Gaza to hold their fire during the vote. Opinion polls have shown Fatah and Hamas in a close race ahead of Wednesday's election and both sides have said they might form a coalition government. Candidates were banned from campaigning Tuesday for a cooling-off period before the election. Mushir al-Masri,...

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Voting in a primary election for the ruling Fatah faction was halted in a Palestinian town near the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday after ballot boxes were set on fire, election officials said. Voting was called off in the town of Salfit "because of problems and divisions", said Ahmed al-Deek, a senior Fatah official. Election officials said some ballot boxes had been torched but there was no immediate word on who was behind it.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended voting in the Gaza Strip and at several West Bank voting stations earlier in the...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Iraq's election, however imperfect, could increase pressure on other authoritarian Arab countries to begin political reforms and hold free balloting. "The Americans were able to hold elections in Iraq and that made them much more comfortable in carrying on with their policies in the Middle East," said Lebanese political analyst Ali Hamadeh. "They showed everybody that you can carry on with an electoral process even when you have security problems." Hamadeh said the message of the election is that if Iraq could carry out "an all-weather democratic process" there is no excuse for other countries not to...

Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky rained on the nearly universal celebration over the Palestinian Authority election Sunday, saying it was not "truly free." "Free elections can only take place in societies in which people are free to express their opinions without fear," Sharansky told The Jerusalem Post. "This is not the case in the Palestinian Authority." He said that while it is likely that the hundreds of international observers who monitored the election will announce Monday that this was a free and open election, what they are really saying is that it was not plagued by fraud. But, he said, there is...

Albert Einstein once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting to achieve a different result. We may want to keep this observation in mind when thinking about whether the upcoming Palestinian elections present a new hope for peace. First, about those elections. While Israel should certainly do everything possible to enable Palestinians to vote, we must not delude ourselves into thinking that these elections will be democratic. Free elections can only occur in a society where people are free to express their opinions without fear of being punished for them. When there is no...

Ronald Reagan had a favorite expression: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!" Official Washington's enthusiasm for the ascendancy of Mahmoud Abbas as the Palestinians' incipient "elected" president surely deserves a Reaganesque "shame on us" rebuke. After all, Abbas (who also goes by the moniker Abu Mazen), was the right hand man of Yasser Arafat for the better part of four decades. Not surprisingly, since the death of his mentor, Abu Mazen has been faithfully replicating the ruse Arafat perpetrated with such telling effect: Fooling the West, and many Israelis, into believing they had found...

Hamas says it might participate in Palestinian voting Militant group vows to continue attacks against Israeli civilians 05/19/2002 Associated Press JERUSALEM - The militant Islamic group Hamas left open the door Saturday to its participation in planned Palestinian elections, a move that would present a formidable challenge to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The extremist group, which is second in popularity among Palestinians only to Mr. Arafat's movement, also vowed Saturday to continue suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. It said it would not stop until Israeli soldiers halted attacks against Palestinian civilians. In the West Bank on Saturday, Israeli soldiers...