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...

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...