il ragno
01-27-2006, 01:34 PM
Anybody still under the delusion that New York isn't controlled completely by its Jewish media oligarchs - or that these Jews are in any way the egalitarian liberals they pose as - had best think twice. The further away from large numbers of uber Jews you get, the more utterly predictable Hamas' victory was yesterday - vide the restrained reaction in Boston and Chicago yesterday - but to the media-baron kikes in control of the Big Bagel, any outcome not orchestrated start to finish by haimish puppeteers is - well, take your pick, actually - anti-American, an act of war against civilization itself, the triumph of evil. If Zuckerman and Dan Pipes had their way, the voting would have immediately been followed by some 'shock and awe' coalition (us, England and Albania) airstrikes.
Apparently the idea that Arabs would vote for the only guy in the race witout a Jewish or American hand up its back is shocking, shocking! Only if you really and truly believe that the world should feel honored to be under Jewish subjugation. The reaction, gauged concentrically outward from New York, indicates that the world will be watching Israel very very closely.
Somebody collect-call Petr: the big Megiddo's Hill finale is coming up any minute now. Gonna make the one at Helms' Deep look like a first-graders' food fight!
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/986-FRONT_BIG.jpg
Palestinian vote is suicide pact : Editorial
Democracy has had its way and the voters have spoken, and swept now into the Palestinian majority are the bloodthirsty gangsters of Hamas, in an astonishing landslide that suddenly rearranges everything but the actual topography of the Middle East.
These are the duly elected representatives who are now legally obligated under the terms and tenets of the road map for peace to move to disarm and dismantle and abolish the Palestinian terror mobs, which is to say themselves. Oh, right.
Hamas is the outfit that invented suicide bombers, the outfit that for years has wantonly slaughtered women and babies and random tourists and anyone else within range of nails and ball bearings, the outfit whose charter calls for the extermination of every Jew in the Holy Land. Dominating parliament, Hamas representatives will now have great say over whatever steps Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas takes to reach peace with Israel. Oh, right again.
Yet some have faith. Former President Jimmy Carter the Good, for one, having watchfully monitored the Palestinian electoral process, declares that deep in his heart he trusts that Hamas will surely remake itself as a responsibly level-headed player on the world stage now that it has been swept into the corridors of legitimate power. Good Jim is of a gentler-souled persuasion that believes sometimes leopards do change their spots. And sometimes pigs do fly.
Far more realistic was the perspective of Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, who expressed concern that the militants will impose a fundamentalist social agenda and lead the Palestinians into international isolation. The latter is pretty much already upon them.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quite rightly said Israel will not negotiate with a "Palestinian administration if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel." Europe won't be returning a lot of Hamas phone calls. And President Bush, of course, said the U.S. wants no part of a group whose platform is Israel's destruction.
Abbas was reduced to suggesting he could negotiate with Israel through an organization separate and apart from the Hamas-led government. There would be the terrorists and there would be the talkers, but life doesn't work that way. You're either part of the civilized community of nations or you're not. And the Palestinian people are on the wrong side of the fence, where their aspirations are doomed.
In case the threat of preventive genocide hadn't been articulated clearly enough, here is yeshiva bully-boy Sidney Zion to repeat it:
The Palestinians voted for terror, nothing less than the destruction of Israel, in a clear voice and by a landslide. Hamas made no bones about it, this was its campaign, complete with the burning of the Star of David to the tune of machine guns riffing in the desert air.
President Bush promoted democracy in Palestine and he got it. Give people the right to have what they want and you end up with a terrorist regime.
Bush says he won't deal with Hamas unless they recognize Israel's right to exist. That decision, Menachim Begin once said, cannot be made by any man or country. The decision was made in the Bible.
It took 2,000 years and incredible pogroms ending in the Holocaust, and great men and women with vision and yes, arms, to bring back the dream of a Jewish state. Do the Palestinians think Hamas can bring it to an end? If so, their dream of their own state will turn out to be their worst nightmare.
http://www.nypost.com/img/front012706.gif
TERRORIST WIN SHAKES ISRAEL
HAMAS GETS A FREE HAND TO CREATE 'TALIBAN' STATE
By URI DAN Mideast Correspondent
January 27, 2006 -- JERUSALEM — The militant Muslim state of "Hamastan" was created yesterday in the West Bank and Gaza — severely setting back the chances for peace, Israeli officials warned as they measured the magnitude of the stunning Palestinian election earthquake. The massive upset by the terrorists-turned-politicians in Wednesday's vote — Hamas captured 76 seats in the parliament to Fatah's 43 — had immediate fallout:
* Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Fatah party and was elected last year, called on Hamas to form a government, as other Fatah officials said they would not govern in a coalition with the terror group but would assume the role of an out-of-power opposition party. Abbas will continue in office.
* Israel announced it would not negotiate with any government containing Hamas, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction, has carried out numerous terror attacks against civilians, and is formally considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Europe.
"Israel and the world will ignore it [a Palestinian government that includes Hamas] and make it irrelevant," acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.
* U.S. and European leaders called on Hamas to renounce violence and recognize the state of Israel. "If your platform is the destruction of Israel, it means you're not a partner in peace, and we're interested in peace," President Bush said in Washington.
* The terror group offered to renew a truce with Israel, but ruled out direct talks with the Jewish state.
* Some experts believed the Hamas victory would force it to moderate. Others feared it would embolden the group to remake Palestinian life in keeping with its fanatically strict interpretation of Islam.
* Hundreds of gunmen loyal to Abbas marched in Gaza City today to express anger over their party's defeat at the hands of Hamas.
* Candidates in Israel's own upcoming elections staked out positions on how to deal with the fundamentalist group.
"The state of Hamastan has been created before our eyes," said opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, candidate of the right-wing Likud Party in March's upcoming elections.
He said Israel should have nothing to do with the new Palestinian government — which he called "an Iranian satellite state in the image of the Taliban."
Final returns showed Hamas enjoyed an unexpected landslide that gives them a hammerlock on the Palestinian Legislative Council — and delivers a devastating blow to the rival Fatah party created by Yasser Arafat.
Abbas' Cabinet immediately resigned, and Abbas called on Hamas to name new ministers to help govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Abbas, who had threatened to quit last week, hinted that he can still negotiate with Israel — outside his government.
"I am committed to implementing the program on which you elected me a year ago," he said in a televised address. "It is a program based on negotiations and peaceful settlement with Israel."
"We are going to reactivate the role of the PLO," he added.
The PLO is the umbrella group that fought Israel for years before beginning the peace process in 1992. Abbas succeeded Arafat as its head before he was elected president last year.
But a top Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, ruled out any negotiations. "We have no peace process," he said. "We are not going to mislead our people and tell them we are waiting, meeting, for a peace process that is nothing."
Zahar, who was ranked No. 1 on the victorious list of Hamas candidates, said the new Palestinian leadership is willing to continue a truce begun last year, if Israel agrees.
"But if not, then I think we will have no option but to protect our people and our land," he said. The first post-election clashes were between Palestinian partisans.
About 3,000 Hamas supporters marched to the parliament building in the West Bank town of Ramallah and planted a green Hamas flag on it.
A pro-Fatah youth tore it down and replaced it with the Palestinian Authority flag. He was stoned by the Hamasniks, who were then confronted by dozens of pro-Fatah men.
At least six people were trampled in the ensuing 30-minute melee, hospital officials said.
Yesterday morning, both Palestinians and Israelis learned of the staggering upset. "Today we woke up and the sky was a different color," said longtime Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "We have entered a new era."
In Gaza, Hamas supporters embraced in the street and fired guns in the air.
"Mohammad Deif should be our defense minister," shouted one Hamas supporter — referring to the wanted mastermind of several suicide bombings.
Among stunned Israelis were relatives of Hamas victims.
"The Palestinians have shown their true face by electing Hamas," said Avi Zana, 46, whose 18-year-old son was killed by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip in 2002.
"The group does not want control of the Palestinian Authority, it wants control of all Israel," she said.
Among the winning Hamas candidates was Umm Nidal, a mother who lost three of her sons in clashes with Israeli troops — and sent her fourth son to his death in carrying out a suicide bombing.
Meanwhile, leading Fatah member Erekat said Fatah will not join in a coalition government with Hamas.
"We will be a loyal opposition and rebuild the party," Erekat said after meeting with Abbas.
He also indicated it would be up to Hamas to take a major role in operating the Palestinian police.
"The victors must assume their responsibilities toward our people in every field — political, security, economic and national," he said.
In Jerusalem, Olmert held an emergency Cabinet meeting for three hours last night and then announced the government was taking a hard line.
"The state of Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian administration if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel," he said in a statement.
Olmert's Cabinet reaffirmed their commitment to the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which requires the Palestinian government to disarm militant groups.
Netanyahu and other critics blamed Olmert's predecessor, Ariel Sharon, and his pullout last year from the Gaza Strip, a Hamas stronghold, for paving Hamas' way to power.
"A policy of unilateral withdrawal rewarded Hamas terror," said Netanyahu.
But the candidate of Israel's Labor Party, Amir Peretz, said the Fatah loss means Israel will have no one to negotiate with — and must make further unilateral concessions to advance the peace process.
"We will not agree to a diplomatic stalemate," Peretz said. "The changes in the Palestinian Authority will not take us hostage."
Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres said European countries may now back out of their promises to finance the destitute Palestinian Authority with hundreds of millions of dollars.
BOSTON HERALD
Can terrorists change course?
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Friday, January 27, 2006
E-mail article View text version View most popular
That’s the funny thing about democracy — you just never know . . .
An estimated 78 percent of some 1.3 million eligible Palestinian voters went to the polls and gave Hamas a resounding victory.
The tenuous Middle East peace process now hangs in the balance. About the best that can be hoped for is a continuation of Hamas’ cease-fire with Israel while Hamas wrestles with the question of what to do now with both Israel and President Bush promising not to deal with this terrorist organization.
Boston Herald:
Do not look for any renunciation of terrorism or disarming of the Hamas militia groups any time soon, even though objectively this would accelerate the formation of a Palestinian state. As the world learned with the Irish Republican Army, people who rely on guns come to see them as essential to their very being, and deciding to give them up takes years — even decades.
Hamas’ sponsorship of suicide, rocket, mortar and other attacks against Israel is infamous. It has taken the lives of about 500 Israelis since its founding in 1993.
Hamas’ election victory appears to have stunned pollsters who had predicted a good showing for the group, but not a winning one. For our part, we are not surprised. Fatah, which has controlled the authority since it was formed in 1993, was the very incarnation of corruption.
From the late Yasser Arafat down through the ranks, Fatah officials diverted billions into personal bank accounts. Hamas ended up doing what Fatah neglected — running schools, clinics, sports leagues, food pantries and other services with notable honesty. Almost always, when given the chance, voters will reject corruption.
This week Fatah reaped the benefits of voter disaffection. Meanwhile the world awaits what genuine power and responsibility will mean to a party born of terror.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Another day in the Mideast ...
Published January 27, 2006
The prime minister of Israel remained in a coma, Iraq's minister of industry dodged a roadside bomb and, oh, the Palestinians put the terrorists in charge.
How desperatedly you'd like to chalk it all up to just another day in the Middle East. But you can't. Even in this spinning Rubik's Cube of a region, what has happened in recent hours takes your breath away.
Palestinians went to the polls and it looked, for a while, as though they had sent a message to the ruling Fatah Party. Turns out they sent a noose.
Exit polls said Fatah had squeaked by Hamas with a plurality in the Palestinian parliament. Welcome to democracy! The exit polls were wrong!
When the vote count was announced Thursday, the radical Hamas had scored a huge upset. It grabbed about 60 percent of the vote and a significant majority in the new Palestinian parliament.
No, this is not just another day. It may shatter the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It may lead to a great internal fight and the international isolation of the Palestinians. It could lead the region to war.
On its face, the rise of Hamas is a formidable problem for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the rival Fatah party. He's been urging a negotiated solution to the conflict with Israel. Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel; it has dispatched scores of suicide bombers over the years. Abbas said he would demand that Hamas disarm after the election. He also said he would resign if Hamas undercut his peace efforts.
Neither happened on Thursday. Abbas didn't resign and Hamas said it wouldn't disarm or change its charter calling for the destruction of Israel. Stalemate? Maybe.
But Abbas also tossed out another notion: He suggested that he may bypass the newly elected Hamas-heavy parliament and conduct peace talks under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he also leads. "I am committed to implementing the program on which you elected me a year ago," he said in a televised speech. "It is a program based on negotiations and peaceful settlement with Israel."
It's unclear how--or if--that would work.
If you're Israel's acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, you're wondering if Abbas has any influence left, particularly if his parliament is likely to reject any peace deal he can deliver. Our guess: Abbas will have no credibility to negotiate with Israel without Hamas on board.
What's most clear is that Hamas faces a choice. It can choose terror or it can choose to build a Palestinian state. It can't do both. Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat tried to talk peace while unleashing terrorist violence. That led his people to poverty, despair and death.
For those seeking a hint of encouragement, consider this: Hamas has largely adhered to a truce with Israel for the last year. It has offered to maintain that truce.
Most tellingly, Hamas ran on a platform of "change and reform"--aimed squarely at the rampant corruption and cronyism of Fatah. Hamas candidates promised better public services, honesty in government and an end to lawlessness. Now it will be expected to deliver clean, safe streets and honest politicians.
When Hamas was outside the government, it could fire at the status quo.
Now it is the status quo.
THE GUARDIAN (UK):
The Palestinians' democratic choice must be respected
The excuses given for refusing to deal with Hamas will not wash. This is a chance for Europe to have an independent role
Jonathan Steele
Friday January 27, 2006
Hamas's triumph in Wednesday's Palestinian elections is the best news from the Middle East for a long time. The poll was a more impressive display of democracy than any other in the region, outstripping last year's votes in Lebanon and Iraq both in turnout and the range of views that candidates represented.
Whereas in Iraq parties that opposed the occupation had to downplay or even obscure their views, Palestinian supporters of armed resistance to Israel's expansionist strategies were able to run openly. It is true that Hamas candidates did not make relations with Israel the centrepiece of their campaign. They focused on reform in the Palestinian Authority. But few voters were unaware of Hamas's uncompromising hostility to occupation and its record in fighting it.
Wednesday's election was remarkable also in owing nothing to Washington's (selective) efforts to promote democracy in the Arab world. Instead, it was further proof that civil society in Palestine is more vibrant than anywhere else in the region and that Palestinian politics has its own dynamics, dictated not by outside pressure but the social and economic demands of ordinary people in appalling conditions. Providing a forum to freely express hopes and fears, debate policy and seek agreed solutions is, after all, what democracy is about.
In Israel and Washington reaction to Hamas's victory has been predictably negative. European governments should take a more sensitive view. The first watchword is caution. Applaud the process but don't take issue with the result. While the dust settles and Hamas works out its own priorities for government, Europeans should calmly analyse why Hamas got so much support.
Among several Hamas leaders I met in Gaza last summer, Mahmoud Zahar, one of its last surviving founders, exuded the clearest sense of inner steel. Trained as a medical doctor in Cairo, and now a short middle-aged figure with combed-over grey hair, he left several impressions. This is no mosque-driven revolutionary or wealthy jihadi of the Osama bin Laden type, motivated by ideology or a desire for adventure. Like other Gazans, he has felt the occupation on his skin. His wife was paralysed and his eldest son killed by an Israeli F-16 attack on his house in 2003. Zahar was in the garden and lucky to survive. In spite of that, he took the lead last year in persuading colleagues that Hamas should declare a truce or period of "calm" with Israel. For 11 months no Hamas member has gone on a suicide bombing mission. That is no mean achievement, which foreign diplomats rarely credit.
Zahar's reasons were not just tactical - a desire to deny Sharon a pretext for abandoning his retreat from Gaza. His strategy is to de-escalate the confrontation with Israel for a long period so that Palestinian society can build a new sense of unity, revive its inner moral strength and clean up its institutions. He feels western governments give aid and use the issue of negotiations with Israel only as a device for conditionality and pressure, not in the interests of justice.
So he wants Palestinians to have a broad-based coalition government that will look to the Arab and Islamic worlds for economic partners and diplomatic support. It's a kind of "parallel unilateralism", matching the mood in Israel where the peace camp clearly has lost all real purchase. "Israeli attitudes show they don't intend to make any agreement. They're going to take many unilateral steps," Zahar told me. "In this bad unbalanced situation and with the interference of the west in the affairs of every Arab country, especially Syria and Lebanon, we can live without any agreement and have a 'calm' for a long time. We're in favour of a long-term truce without recognition of Israel, provided Sharon is also looking for a truce. Everything will change in 10 or 20 years."
Zahar also left me with no sense of embarrassment about the imminence of power. He pointed out that Mahmoud Abbas would remain president for three more years, as though implying he could be a convenient front for inevitably unproductive talks with Washington and Israel while Hamas acted as a watchdog on the main issues. "There will be no contradiction between the Palestine legislative council and the president," he said. "We will be the safeguard, and the safety valve, against any betrayal."
Along with caution in reacting to the Hamas victory, Europe's second priority should be to maintain continuity. Any cut-off in EU aid would only be a gift to Israel's hardliners. The EU is the largest international donor to the Palestinian Authority, and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, blundered last month when he told a Gaza press conference that "it would be very difficult for the help and the money that goes to the Palestinian Authority to continue to flow" if Hamas were in government.
Yesterday's EU statements were more measured. If Europe, weak though its power may currently be, wants to have an independent role in the Middle East, clearly different from the manipulative US approach, it is vital to go on funding the PA regardless of the Hamas presence in government. Nor should the EU fall back on the cynical hope that Hamas will be as corrupt as Fatah, and so lose support. You cannot use European taxpayers' money to strengthen Palestinian institutions while privately wanting reforms to fail. Hamas should be encouraged in aiming to be more honest than its predecessors.
Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the "war on terror". Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus. Hamas's refusal to give formal recognition of Israel's right to exist should also not be seen by Europe as an urgent problem. History and international politics do not march in tidy simultaneous steps. For decades Israel refused even to recognise the existence of the Palestinian people, just as Turkey did not recognise the Kurds. Until 15 years ago Palestinians had to be smuggled to international summits as part of Jordan's delegation. It is less than that since the Israeli government accepted the goal of a Palestinian state.
Hamas may eventually disarm itself and recognise Israel. That will be the end of the process of establishing a just modus vivendi for Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. It cannot be the first step. Today's priority is to accept that Palestinians have spoken freely. They deserve respect and support.
Apparently the idea that Arabs would vote for the only guy in the race witout a Jewish or American hand up its back is shocking, shocking! Only if you really and truly believe that the world should feel honored to be under Jewish subjugation. The reaction, gauged concentrically outward from New York, indicates that the world will be watching Israel very very closely.
Somebody collect-call Petr: the big Megiddo's Hill finale is coming up any minute now. Gonna make the one at Helms' Deep look like a first-graders' food fight!
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/986-FRONT_BIG.jpg
Palestinian vote is suicide pact : Editorial
Democracy has had its way and the voters have spoken, and swept now into the Palestinian majority are the bloodthirsty gangsters of Hamas, in an astonishing landslide that suddenly rearranges everything but the actual topography of the Middle East.
These are the duly elected representatives who are now legally obligated under the terms and tenets of the road map for peace to move to disarm and dismantle and abolish the Palestinian terror mobs, which is to say themselves. Oh, right.
Hamas is the outfit that invented suicide bombers, the outfit that for years has wantonly slaughtered women and babies and random tourists and anyone else within range of nails and ball bearings, the outfit whose charter calls for the extermination of every Jew in the Holy Land. Dominating parliament, Hamas representatives will now have great say over whatever steps Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas takes to reach peace with Israel. Oh, right again.
Yet some have faith. Former President Jimmy Carter the Good, for one, having watchfully monitored the Palestinian electoral process, declares that deep in his heart he trusts that Hamas will surely remake itself as a responsibly level-headed player on the world stage now that it has been swept into the corridors of legitimate power. Good Jim is of a gentler-souled persuasion that believes sometimes leopards do change their spots. And sometimes pigs do fly.
Far more realistic was the perspective of Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, who expressed concern that the militants will impose a fundamentalist social agenda and lead the Palestinians into international isolation. The latter is pretty much already upon them.
Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quite rightly said Israel will not negotiate with a "Palestinian administration if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel." Europe won't be returning a lot of Hamas phone calls. And President Bush, of course, said the U.S. wants no part of a group whose platform is Israel's destruction.
Abbas was reduced to suggesting he could negotiate with Israel through an organization separate and apart from the Hamas-led government. There would be the terrorists and there would be the talkers, but life doesn't work that way. You're either part of the civilized community of nations or you're not. And the Palestinian people are on the wrong side of the fence, where their aspirations are doomed.
In case the threat of preventive genocide hadn't been articulated clearly enough, here is yeshiva bully-boy Sidney Zion to repeat it:
The Palestinians voted for terror, nothing less than the destruction of Israel, in a clear voice and by a landslide. Hamas made no bones about it, this was its campaign, complete with the burning of the Star of David to the tune of machine guns riffing in the desert air.
President Bush promoted democracy in Palestine and he got it. Give people the right to have what they want and you end up with a terrorist regime.
Bush says he won't deal with Hamas unless they recognize Israel's right to exist. That decision, Menachim Begin once said, cannot be made by any man or country. The decision was made in the Bible.
It took 2,000 years and incredible pogroms ending in the Holocaust, and great men and women with vision and yes, arms, to bring back the dream of a Jewish state. Do the Palestinians think Hamas can bring it to an end? If so, their dream of their own state will turn out to be their worst nightmare.
http://www.nypost.com/img/front012706.gif
TERRORIST WIN SHAKES ISRAEL
HAMAS GETS A FREE HAND TO CREATE 'TALIBAN' STATE
By URI DAN Mideast Correspondent
January 27, 2006 -- JERUSALEM — The militant Muslim state of "Hamastan" was created yesterday in the West Bank and Gaza — severely setting back the chances for peace, Israeli officials warned as they measured the magnitude of the stunning Palestinian election earthquake. The massive upset by the terrorists-turned-politicians in Wednesday's vote — Hamas captured 76 seats in the parliament to Fatah's 43 — had immediate fallout:
* Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Fatah party and was elected last year, called on Hamas to form a government, as other Fatah officials said they would not govern in a coalition with the terror group but would assume the role of an out-of-power opposition party. Abbas will continue in office.
* Israel announced it would not negotiate with any government containing Hamas, which is dedicated to Israel's destruction, has carried out numerous terror attacks against civilians, and is formally considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Europe.
"Israel and the world will ignore it [a Palestinian government that includes Hamas] and make it irrelevant," acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.
* U.S. and European leaders called on Hamas to renounce violence and recognize the state of Israel. "If your platform is the destruction of Israel, it means you're not a partner in peace, and we're interested in peace," President Bush said in Washington.
* The terror group offered to renew a truce with Israel, but ruled out direct talks with the Jewish state.
* Some experts believed the Hamas victory would force it to moderate. Others feared it would embolden the group to remake Palestinian life in keeping with its fanatically strict interpretation of Islam.
* Hundreds of gunmen loyal to Abbas marched in Gaza City today to express anger over their party's defeat at the hands of Hamas.
* Candidates in Israel's own upcoming elections staked out positions on how to deal with the fundamentalist group.
"The state of Hamastan has been created before our eyes," said opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, candidate of the right-wing Likud Party in March's upcoming elections.
He said Israel should have nothing to do with the new Palestinian government — which he called "an Iranian satellite state in the image of the Taliban."
Final returns showed Hamas enjoyed an unexpected landslide that gives them a hammerlock on the Palestinian Legislative Council — and delivers a devastating blow to the rival Fatah party created by Yasser Arafat.
Abbas' Cabinet immediately resigned, and Abbas called on Hamas to name new ministers to help govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Abbas, who had threatened to quit last week, hinted that he can still negotiate with Israel — outside his government.
"I am committed to implementing the program on which you elected me a year ago," he said in a televised address. "It is a program based on negotiations and peaceful settlement with Israel."
"We are going to reactivate the role of the PLO," he added.
The PLO is the umbrella group that fought Israel for years before beginning the peace process in 1992. Abbas succeeded Arafat as its head before he was elected president last year.
But a top Hamas official, Mahmoud Zahar, ruled out any negotiations. "We have no peace process," he said. "We are not going to mislead our people and tell them we are waiting, meeting, for a peace process that is nothing."
Zahar, who was ranked No. 1 on the victorious list of Hamas candidates, said the new Palestinian leadership is willing to continue a truce begun last year, if Israel agrees.
"But if not, then I think we will have no option but to protect our people and our land," he said. The first post-election clashes were between Palestinian partisans.
About 3,000 Hamas supporters marched to the parliament building in the West Bank town of Ramallah and planted a green Hamas flag on it.
A pro-Fatah youth tore it down and replaced it with the Palestinian Authority flag. He was stoned by the Hamasniks, who were then confronted by dozens of pro-Fatah men.
At least six people were trampled in the ensuing 30-minute melee, hospital officials said.
Yesterday morning, both Palestinians and Israelis learned of the staggering upset. "Today we woke up and the sky was a different color," said longtime Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "We have entered a new era."
In Gaza, Hamas supporters embraced in the street and fired guns in the air.
"Mohammad Deif should be our defense minister," shouted one Hamas supporter — referring to the wanted mastermind of several suicide bombings.
Among stunned Israelis were relatives of Hamas victims.
"The Palestinians have shown their true face by electing Hamas," said Avi Zana, 46, whose 18-year-old son was killed by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip in 2002.
"The group does not want control of the Palestinian Authority, it wants control of all Israel," she said.
Among the winning Hamas candidates was Umm Nidal, a mother who lost three of her sons in clashes with Israeli troops — and sent her fourth son to his death in carrying out a suicide bombing.
Meanwhile, leading Fatah member Erekat said Fatah will not join in a coalition government with Hamas.
"We will be a loyal opposition and rebuild the party," Erekat said after meeting with Abbas.
He also indicated it would be up to Hamas to take a major role in operating the Palestinian police.
"The victors must assume their responsibilities toward our people in every field — political, security, economic and national," he said.
In Jerusalem, Olmert held an emergency Cabinet meeting for three hours last night and then announced the government was taking a hard line.
"The state of Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian administration if even part of it is an armed terrorist organization calling for the destruction of the state of Israel," he said in a statement.
Olmert's Cabinet reaffirmed their commitment to the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which requires the Palestinian government to disarm militant groups.
Netanyahu and other critics blamed Olmert's predecessor, Ariel Sharon, and his pullout last year from the Gaza Strip, a Hamas stronghold, for paving Hamas' way to power.
"A policy of unilateral withdrawal rewarded Hamas terror," said Netanyahu.
But the candidate of Israel's Labor Party, Amir Peretz, said the Fatah loss means Israel will have no one to negotiate with — and must make further unilateral concessions to advance the peace process.
"We will not agree to a diplomatic stalemate," Peretz said. "The changes in the Palestinian Authority will not take us hostage."
Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres said European countries may now back out of their promises to finance the destitute Palestinian Authority with hundreds of millions of dollars.
BOSTON HERALD
Can terrorists change course?
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Friday, January 27, 2006
E-mail article View text version View most popular
That’s the funny thing about democracy — you just never know . . .
An estimated 78 percent of some 1.3 million eligible Palestinian voters went to the polls and gave Hamas a resounding victory.
The tenuous Middle East peace process now hangs in the balance. About the best that can be hoped for is a continuation of Hamas’ cease-fire with Israel while Hamas wrestles with the question of what to do now with both Israel and President Bush promising not to deal with this terrorist organization.
Boston Herald:
Do not look for any renunciation of terrorism or disarming of the Hamas militia groups any time soon, even though objectively this would accelerate the formation of a Palestinian state. As the world learned with the Irish Republican Army, people who rely on guns come to see them as essential to their very being, and deciding to give them up takes years — even decades.
Hamas’ sponsorship of suicide, rocket, mortar and other attacks against Israel is infamous. It has taken the lives of about 500 Israelis since its founding in 1993.
Hamas’ election victory appears to have stunned pollsters who had predicted a good showing for the group, but not a winning one. For our part, we are not surprised. Fatah, which has controlled the authority since it was formed in 1993, was the very incarnation of corruption.
From the late Yasser Arafat down through the ranks, Fatah officials diverted billions into personal bank accounts. Hamas ended up doing what Fatah neglected — running schools, clinics, sports leagues, food pantries and other services with notable honesty. Almost always, when given the chance, voters will reject corruption.
This week Fatah reaped the benefits of voter disaffection. Meanwhile the world awaits what genuine power and responsibility will mean to a party born of terror.
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Another day in the Mideast ...
Published January 27, 2006
The prime minister of Israel remained in a coma, Iraq's minister of industry dodged a roadside bomb and, oh, the Palestinians put the terrorists in charge.
How desperatedly you'd like to chalk it all up to just another day in the Middle East. But you can't. Even in this spinning Rubik's Cube of a region, what has happened in recent hours takes your breath away.
Palestinians went to the polls and it looked, for a while, as though they had sent a message to the ruling Fatah Party. Turns out they sent a noose.
Exit polls said Fatah had squeaked by Hamas with a plurality in the Palestinian parliament. Welcome to democracy! The exit polls were wrong!
When the vote count was announced Thursday, the radical Hamas had scored a huge upset. It grabbed about 60 percent of the vote and a significant majority in the new Palestinian parliament.
No, this is not just another day. It may shatter the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. It may lead to a great internal fight and the international isolation of the Palestinians. It could lead the region to war.
On its face, the rise of Hamas is a formidable problem for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the rival Fatah party. He's been urging a negotiated solution to the conflict with Israel. Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel; it has dispatched scores of suicide bombers over the years. Abbas said he would demand that Hamas disarm after the election. He also said he would resign if Hamas undercut his peace efforts.
Neither happened on Thursday. Abbas didn't resign and Hamas said it wouldn't disarm or change its charter calling for the destruction of Israel. Stalemate? Maybe.
But Abbas also tossed out another notion: He suggested that he may bypass the newly elected Hamas-heavy parliament and conduct peace talks under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which he also leads. "I am committed to implementing the program on which you elected me a year ago," he said in a televised speech. "It is a program based on negotiations and peaceful settlement with Israel."
It's unclear how--or if--that would work.
If you're Israel's acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, you're wondering if Abbas has any influence left, particularly if his parliament is likely to reject any peace deal he can deliver. Our guess: Abbas will have no credibility to negotiate with Israel without Hamas on board.
What's most clear is that Hamas faces a choice. It can choose terror or it can choose to build a Palestinian state. It can't do both. Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat tried to talk peace while unleashing terrorist violence. That led his people to poverty, despair and death.
For those seeking a hint of encouragement, consider this: Hamas has largely adhered to a truce with Israel for the last year. It has offered to maintain that truce.
Most tellingly, Hamas ran on a platform of "change and reform"--aimed squarely at the rampant corruption and cronyism of Fatah. Hamas candidates promised better public services, honesty in government and an end to lawlessness. Now it will be expected to deliver clean, safe streets and honest politicians.
When Hamas was outside the government, it could fire at the status quo.
Now it is the status quo.
THE GUARDIAN (UK):
The Palestinians' democratic choice must be respected
The excuses given for refusing to deal with Hamas will not wash. This is a chance for Europe to have an independent role
Jonathan Steele
Friday January 27, 2006
Hamas's triumph in Wednesday's Palestinian elections is the best news from the Middle East for a long time. The poll was a more impressive display of democracy than any other in the region, outstripping last year's votes in Lebanon and Iraq both in turnout and the range of views that candidates represented.
Whereas in Iraq parties that opposed the occupation had to downplay or even obscure their views, Palestinian supporters of armed resistance to Israel's expansionist strategies were able to run openly. It is true that Hamas candidates did not make relations with Israel the centrepiece of their campaign. They focused on reform in the Palestinian Authority. But few voters were unaware of Hamas's uncompromising hostility to occupation and its record in fighting it.
Wednesday's election was remarkable also in owing nothing to Washington's (selective) efforts to promote democracy in the Arab world. Instead, it was further proof that civil society in Palestine is more vibrant than anywhere else in the region and that Palestinian politics has its own dynamics, dictated not by outside pressure but the social and economic demands of ordinary people in appalling conditions. Providing a forum to freely express hopes and fears, debate policy and seek agreed solutions is, after all, what democracy is about.
In Israel and Washington reaction to Hamas's victory has been predictably negative. European governments should take a more sensitive view. The first watchword is caution. Applaud the process but don't take issue with the result. While the dust settles and Hamas works out its own priorities for government, Europeans should calmly analyse why Hamas got so much support.
Among several Hamas leaders I met in Gaza last summer, Mahmoud Zahar, one of its last surviving founders, exuded the clearest sense of inner steel. Trained as a medical doctor in Cairo, and now a short middle-aged figure with combed-over grey hair, he left several impressions. This is no mosque-driven revolutionary or wealthy jihadi of the Osama bin Laden type, motivated by ideology or a desire for adventure. Like other Gazans, he has felt the occupation on his skin. His wife was paralysed and his eldest son killed by an Israeli F-16 attack on his house in 2003. Zahar was in the garden and lucky to survive. In spite of that, he took the lead last year in persuading colleagues that Hamas should declare a truce or period of "calm" with Israel. For 11 months no Hamas member has gone on a suicide bombing mission. That is no mean achievement, which foreign diplomats rarely credit.
Zahar's reasons were not just tactical - a desire to deny Sharon a pretext for abandoning his retreat from Gaza. His strategy is to de-escalate the confrontation with Israel for a long period so that Palestinian society can build a new sense of unity, revive its inner moral strength and clean up its institutions. He feels western governments give aid and use the issue of negotiations with Israel only as a device for conditionality and pressure, not in the interests of justice.
So he wants Palestinians to have a broad-based coalition government that will look to the Arab and Islamic worlds for economic partners and diplomatic support. It's a kind of "parallel unilateralism", matching the mood in Israel where the peace camp clearly has lost all real purchase. "Israeli attitudes show they don't intend to make any agreement. They're going to take many unilateral steps," Zahar told me. "In this bad unbalanced situation and with the interference of the west in the affairs of every Arab country, especially Syria and Lebanon, we can live without any agreement and have a 'calm' for a long time. We're in favour of a long-term truce without recognition of Israel, provided Sharon is also looking for a truce. Everything will change in 10 or 20 years."
Zahar also left me with no sense of embarrassment about the imminence of power. He pointed out that Mahmoud Abbas would remain president for three more years, as though implying he could be a convenient front for inevitably unproductive talks with Washington and Israel while Hamas acted as a watchdog on the main issues. "There will be no contradiction between the Palestine legislative council and the president," he said. "We will be the safeguard, and the safety valve, against any betrayal."
Along with caution in reacting to the Hamas victory, Europe's second priority should be to maintain continuity. Any cut-off in EU aid would only be a gift to Israel's hardliners. The EU is the largest international donor to the Palestinian Authority, and Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, blundered last month when he told a Gaza press conference that "it would be very difficult for the help and the money that goes to the Palestinian Authority to continue to flow" if Hamas were in government.
Yesterday's EU statements were more measured. If Europe, weak though its power may currently be, wants to have an independent role in the Middle East, clearly different from the manipulative US approach, it is vital to go on funding the PA regardless of the Hamas presence in government. Nor should the EU fall back on the cynical hope that Hamas will be as corrupt as Fatah, and so lose support. You cannot use European taxpayers' money to strengthen Palestinian institutions while privately wanting reforms to fail. Hamas should be encouraged in aiming to be more honest than its predecessors.
Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the "war on terror". Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus. Hamas's refusal to give formal recognition of Israel's right to exist should also not be seen by Europe as an urgent problem. History and international politics do not march in tidy simultaneous steps. For decades Israel refused even to recognise the existence of the Palestinian people, just as Turkey did not recognise the Kurds. Until 15 years ago Palestinians had to be smuggled to international summits as part of Jordan's delegation. It is less than that since the Israeli government accepted the goal of a Palestinian state.
Hamas may eventually disarm itself and recognise Israel. That will be the end of the process of establishing a just modus vivendi for Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. It cannot be the first step. Today's priority is to accept that Palestinians have spoken freely. They deserve respect and support.