FRENCH: HAMAS HAS EMBRACED DEMOCRACY!

Hamas Will Not Recognize Israel or Disarm - Craig S. Smith
Hamas's most prominent leader in Gaza and the West Bank, Mahmoud Zahar, said Wednesday that his faction would still refuse to recognize Israel or disarm even if it won in the Palestinian elections this month. "The calmness has ended," Zahar said, but he left open the possibility that Hamas might refrain from attacks on Israel "if not provoked." He said that if Hamas won the election on Jan. 25, it would not recognize agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but would work with Fatah in forming a new government.

Zahar said that Hamas would not give up its weapons, but that as a partner in government it would support the inclusion of all militias in a unified army that would disarm Palestinian clans fighting among themselves. Nor did he exclude the possibility of renewed attacks inside Israel. Zahar said Israel's withdrawal from Gaza had vindicated Hamas's policy of violent attacks, including the use of suicide bombers. "They escaped from Gaza," he said. "This was not an Israeli gift." Zahar also rejected any connection between Hamas and al-Qaeda. (New York Times)

See also Rice: No Place in Political Process for Groups Who Refuse to Recognize Israel and Disarm
Secretary of State Rice said in a statement Wednesday that she welcomed Acting Prime Minister Olmert's statement that Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem will be allowed to vote in the upcoming PA elections "in accordance with existing precedent."

"It remains the view of the United States that there should be no place in the political process for groups or individuals who refuse to renounce terror and violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and disarm....To participate in a peace process of Israelis and Palestinians, the Palestinian partner must at least accept Israel's right to exist. To implement agreements on movement and access for the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian partner must be committed to preventing violence." Rice noted the need for "implementing Roadmap obligations to dismantle the infrastructure of terror." (State Department)

Israel’s acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agrees with Condi Rice and has told President Bush that there can be no progress toward peace with Hamas in the Palestinian government. And this prompted Agence France Presse to write the following:

Israel and the United States both regard Hamas, responsible for the majority of attacks during a five-year Palestinian uprising, as a terrorist organisation despite its embrace of the democratic process.

KIND OF THE WAY A COBRA "EMBRACES" ITS VICTIM.

HERE'S A BEAUTY FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Hamas “Anger” At Israelis (Times Watch)
With Palestinian elections coming later this month, Craig Smith reports from Gaza City that “Election Role Won’t Soften Hamas Anger At the Israelis.” Of course, the anti-Israeli terrorist group Hamas feels more than “anger” toward the Israelis -- more like bloodthirsty hatred, which they’ve proven with scores of murders of Israeli civilians.

In his interview with Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar, Smith states mildly, “Since the group's founding in Gaza in 1987, its focus has been to fight Israel, and it has often used suicide bombers. Its long-term goal is to establish an Islamic theocracy over Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” That passive construction eliminates the need to mention the scores of civilian deaths caused by Hamas’s terror bombings, though Smith is at least more forthcoming about Hamas’s bloody aims than his colleague Stephen Erlanger. “But [Zahar] appeared to have tempered his often fiery talk ahead of the elections, just as Hamas's military wing, the Qassam Brigades, has tempered its activity. He said ‘resistance is not about guns alone,’ and he cited the building of self-reliant industry and education as other forms of resisting Israeli control and making the Palestinians strong.”

It wouldn’t be a Times article without at least a nod to the terrorist group’s “social” activism: “Hamas's social programs in education and aid for the Palestinians' most fragile classes had demonstrated the faction's credentials to govern, and won it support as an organization that could be trusted to clean up a corrupt Palestinian Authority, he said.”

REMEMBER HITLER'S "ANGER" AT THE JEWS OF EUROPE? I THINK ANY RESPONSIBLE ARTICLE MIGHT ALLUDE TO THE FACT THAT HAMAS IS FOUNDED ON IRRATIONAL, GENOCIDAL BLOOD-LUST.