Get ready for more bloodshed between Israel and Palestine. According to the Associated Press, the “Islamic militant Hamas” has won a resounding victory in the Palestinian Parlaimentary elections, securing 76 seats in the 132 seat house. No sooner were the election results announced than Hamas supporters raced to the roof of the Parlaiment building to raise the flag of Hamas. The Hamas flag is green with the words, “There is no God but Allah” as well as “Mohammed is his Prophet.”
There were brief clashes with members of Fatah, the opposition party, including a rock-throwing skirmish. Fatah supporters were able, at one point, to reach the roof and lower the Hamas flag, but they were quickly forced to retreat and the flag was raised again.
With Hamas now firmly in power, further peace negotiations don’t look promising and the official prognosis is not optimistic. For example, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi said that the Hamas victory was a “very, very, very bad result.”
The reason for such pessimism is that Hamas has a long history of terrorism and they have demonstrated no serious inclination to give up their weapons of terrorist activities. They have publicly stated that they are dedicated to the destruction of Israel and they have also indicated that their long-term goal is to impose Islam around the globe as the words on their flag hint.
The Hamas organization stretches well beyond Palestine including a strong connection with a small but extremely militant arm in New York City. The Islamic Thinker’s Society operates out of a Brooklyn, New York, mosque and was the incubator for such notorios events as the failed subway bombing and a rabidly anti-American video tape in which American flags were thrown in the street and stomped on.
While the video shows a deliberately vile desecration of the American flag, the narrator says, “Just to show where our loyalty belongs to – you see this flag here? It’s going to go on the floor. And to us, our loyalty does not belong to this flag, our loyalty belongs to Allah … .” Then another speaker follows with the claim that their goal is to help “Islam to dominate over all other religions, to dominate the world, even though the non-Muslims may hate it.”
The results of today’s election are, without a doubt, a giant step backward in the war on terror.