Hamas Wins Election

So is april to far off for the SHTF

March?

Nah, we'll just keep doling out the money, and they'll take it with one hand and slap us with the other. Supposedly, the money goes to the "Palestinien people". Well, duh, the "people" elected Hamas....

This is bad.... REAL BAD......

DUH! Surprise! Surprise!

Anyone have insightfull predictions about how world events are going to escalate from here?

Well, let's see...

Take a full powderkeg. Now, put it under a sizable amount of pressure. Add a good bit more powder. And some more pressure...

Hmmm... Hamas in charge in the West Bank and Gaza. A nutcase in Iran, supporting Hamas and trying to get a nuke. Israel NOT liking either situation... hmmm...

Yep. March. Early March.

The Middle East just got a lot more "Interesting"

HBB

That's an easy question. Irael will be pushed into a very
tight corner. Then she will unlease some nasty upon her
agressors. The rest of the ignorant, immoral world will not tolerate such action......and the book of Revelation takes over from
there! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I can hardly wait! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Sure do hope the pretribulation rapture crowd has this part figured right. I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to radiation <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Bush Says U.S. Won't Deal With Hamas
Jan 26 10:36 AM US/Eastern
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By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON

President Bush said Thursday that Hamas cannot be partner for Middle East peacemaking without renouncing violence, and he reiterated that the United States will not deal with Palestinian leaders who do not recognize Israel's right to exist.

Bush urged Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to remain in office after Wednesday's stunning Hamas victory over Abbas' Fatah faction in Palestinian elections.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, also speaking Thursday said, "you cannot have one foot in politics and another in terror." Rice spoke to the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland via a telephone hookup to the State Department. "Our position on Hamas has therefore not changed."

Rice spoke shortly after Palestinian voters rejected the longtime rule of the Fatah Party, throwing the future of Mideast peacemaking into question.

"Palestinian people have apparently voted for change, but we believe their aspirations for peace and a peaceful life remain unchanged," she said. Rice said those goals will require renunciation of violence and terrorism and acceptance of Israel's right to exist side-by-side with a Palestinian state.

"Anyone who wants to govern the Palestinian people and do so with the support of the international community has got to be committed to a two-state solution," Rice said. "You can't have a peace process if you're not committed to the right of your partner to exist."

She predicted that the world will "speak clearly" on those points over the next day or so, but did not outline just how the United States plans to proceed.

Hamas has taken responsibility for dozens of suicide attacks on Israel over the past five years, but has largely observed a cease-fire since the election of Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas as Palestinian president last year.

"Hamas is a terrorist organization, which means they believe it is their right to murder women, children and innocent civilians to achieve their goals," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "It is unrealistic, unwise and even immoral to ask Israel to sit down with a government that contains people who have such beliefs. No other country would, why should Israel?"

The initial speculation Wednesday _ as Hamas ran neck-and-neck with Abbas' Fatah Party _ was that Hamas would steer clear of a post involving peacemaking efforts and would be consigned to domestic ministries such as education.

But Hamas' defeat of Fatah could change that calculation in a way that might put pressure on Washington to find a way to both uphold aversion to the militant group and also promote peacemaking.

For years, even though he was the unquestioned leader of the Palestinians, the United States declined to deal with _ or even have contact with _ Yasser Arafat.

Under U.S. pressure in the Reagan administration, Arafat made a statement renouncing terrorism, and the United States went on to deal with him in Mideast peace efforts.

But Bush, deciding that Arafat was corrupt and linked to persistent violence against Israel, cut him off, and did not invite him to the White House.

Rice is due to meet in London on Monday with U.N., Russian and European leaders as the so-called "Quartet" evaluates the results and tries to decide how to proceed with peacemaking efforts.

Here's a question... what happens if the whole danged thing explodes in a hugeazz war, with all the soothsayers sayin' that it's Revelations and pointing to signs and getting all tore out the frame... and in the end, it's just another war and we move with no extraterrestrial/supernatural occurrences? Hmmm...

If you promote democracy you have to be willing to deal with the results. A Hamas victory is definately worth being concerned over but it would seem to me it may be a blessing in disguise. The ba$tards have been lurking in the shadows for years. They never in their wildest dreams thought they would win. Nor did they want to. Now suddenly they are forced from the sewers into the sunlight and have to show they can run things.

Jeff

An excellent, and interesting, take on it.

Sure do hope the pretribulation rapture crowd has this part figured right. I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to radiation <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> [/quote]

There is no such thing as a "rapture". Term not found in scripture. But yes, the "Catching up of the saints" is
pre-trib! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Not to worry!

HMmmmm? Another non-believer? For your sake, I hope
I'm wrong! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> World wide nuclear war just another war?

HMmmmm. Very interesting?


All it would prove is that mankind is an accidental blight on the planet. An uncontrolled VIRUS that needs erradicated!

I believe in a lot of things. Just not religion.

BTW - I don't see a world-wide nuclear war. One, maybe two, nukes, at most. One from a Middle Eastern address hitting Israel, maybe two, and then the gloves come off, permanently, and the U.S., Israel, the U.K. ... heck, maybe even France, kick the living dogsh!t out of everything else over there - once and for all.

VA, of course you are right... the soothsayers have been shouting " it's the end times" for over 2000 years now... but come on... current events have got you wondering....right?

In the for what it's worth department... the first 2 books in the Left Behind series (The Vanishings and Second Chance) were real page turners for me. After that I thought LaHaye/Jenkins were just trying to milk their early success and failed badly. Perhaps they are some relation to Robertson... or your buddy Jerry<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Current events are current events. Can't say as to whether my curiousity over them is affected much at all by whether or not they might relate to some story written down about 1,500 years ago or not. Don't really matter, as there sure as heck ain't a danged thing that I can do about it either way.

This could very well be a good thing at least in terms of long term credibility for Hamas. One of the largest problems facing the palestinian people is a lack of infrastructure. You know, things like clean water, roads, education. Crap like that which we take for granted. Hamas ran on a platform of improvement in these areas and a reduction in corruption. Now they will have to come through. Given the fact they are terrorists and not engineers I do not see this happening.

In addition to this there will be an enormous amount of pressure on them to stop the sanctioned violence if they want to participate in international affairs. Could make them less extreme in an attempt to keep credibility as a political organization.

OR

we could end up in a huge ass war. And that would suck.

Jim

I don't see this is the beginning of the end of the world. Let's face it, everything going on in the middle east is about folks taking and holding power. All the retoric is just to keep the poor nearly starving folks off focus of their terrible conditions and those responsible for keeping them there.

Once in political power, and having a desire to keep that power, a radical war mongerer is most often much more temperate in their actions than in their speaches. Having the Israeli army kick Palenstinian ass, and target their leaders with missle attacks is really not what the Hamas leaders want. They'll keep up the rhetoric to keep their credibility, but don't be suprised if their actions don't match their words.

Looks like Hamas is going to have to put up or shut up. Now they have to show if they have any leadership ability or are they all just armed thugs. I'm voting for the armed thug part. kwg

They've been running hospitals and other civic organizations for years, in addition to their more dubious activities. They have to be less corrupt than Fatah. Now they have to put up, or shut up. That old Chinese curse about living in interesting times, seems to have taken root.

Here are my two or three cents on the matter.

1. While Hamas is an organization that supports terrorism, make no mistake about their leadership and intellectual capacity. They have provided enough leadership in their local communities to gain a solid majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament, and their ranks include many doctors and engineers. I expect the Hamas-led parliament to make great strides toward improving infrastructure and quality of life in the Palestinian territories as long as they can resist succumbing to the same corruption that marked the Fatah government.

2. The Fatah government came out of a terrorist organization -- the PLO. Terrorist organizations can to a certain extent come into the mainstream, and I expect that Hamas will follow a path similar to the one that the PLO/Fatah Party did.

3. The Palestinian people, who for many years (decades) felt they didn't have a voice, have now elected their choices for Parliament. When you consider the amount of corruption in the Fatah government, there were probably some voting irregularities in favor of the Fatah government, which makes the Hamas victory even more amazing.

Despite Hamas' terrorist leanings, the Palestinian people having their voices heard lets off some steam in the pressure cooker on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. You can't underestimate the influence of the feelings of disenfranchisement on the young men and women who get involved with terrorism. If there's another way a person can make a difference in the world besides blowing himself up on a bus or at a crowded outdoor cafe, then hopefully he will choose the constructive political path rather than the destructive terrorist path.

Also, with the voice of the Palestinian people being reflected in the election and the corrupt Fatah government being tossed, it should give the Palestinian government more credibility around the world.

I am definitely no fan of Hamas, and my opinion is that the change from the Fatah to the Hamas government will set back the Middle East peace process a year or two, but in the end this election will be a jump ahead. The Palestinian people will benefit from having more than one viable party, and Hamas will quickly realize (they probably already have) that they have to adopt new methods reflective of their new role in the Palestinian world. The Bush Administration and the Israelis have to play hard ball with Hamas to get them to immediately get into the mainstream instead of being a fringe group (that's the goal of the current U.S. and Israeli rhetoric), and I think at this time next year Hamas will be a much different beast than it is now.

From what I've read about Hamas and the PLO (Fatah), I'm optimistic that this change is for the better in the long term. If Abbas stays as president of the Palestinian Authority and can work with Hamas to bring them around, better days are ahead. We just have to keep the pressure on the Palestinian government to pursue diplomacy and pray for the best.

The Hamas election shouldn't surprise anyone except the dunces in DC...

Hamas reminds me a cat that catches a bird and then is not too sure what to do next. They won the election fairly and now must put together a government. With governmental responsibility comes responsibility. They will now either show responsibility, or the chaos that they have inflicted on the Middle East, will come back to haunt them.

My guess is that they�ll have trouble exercising this responsibility. They are a �party� of disparate people with only a single common thread � hatred of Israel. If their leaders do succeed forming a government and acting responsibly, their rag-tag following will continue the violence and possibly direct it at the leadership.