The balloon has gone up.
Quote:Recognising Israel is not on the agendaMushir al-Masri
Hours before official results were due to be released, Fatah officials privately admitted that Hamas had won.
Hamas claimed it had won at least 70 seats in the 132-member parliament.
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Jerusalem says there is no doubt that the Hamas showing has transformed the Palestinian political arena.
For decades, Fatah - the party founded by the late Yasser Arafat - has totally dominated electoral politics, but that time is over, he says.
Hamas is also now a major power and it will enter parliament still committed to its armed confrontation with Israel, our correspondent adds.
No talks
With victory looming, senior Hamas official Ismail Haniya said the group would discuss political partnership with Fatah.
"This issue is going to be one of our priorities in the near future," the Associated Press news agency quoted him as saying.
Another Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, warned though that Hamas would not hold peace talks with Israel.
"Negotiations with Israel is not on our agenda," he said.
"Recognising Israel is not on the agenda either now."
The likelihood of a resounding victory of Hamas - which is committed to the destruction of Israel - sent shockwaves though the Jewish state.
Speaking on the night of the election, acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel could not deal with a Palestinian Authority which included Hamas.
"Israel can't accept a situation in which Hamas, in its present form as a terror group calling for the destruction of Israel, will be part of the Palestinian Authority without disarming," Mr Olmert's office reported him as saying.
"I won't hold negotiations with a government that does not stick to its most basic obligation of fighting terror."
The outcome of the Palestinian election is the biggest challenge facing Mr Olmert since he took over from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who suffered a massive stroke on 4 January.
Call to disarm
Mr Haniya called for the US to "respect ... the will of the Palestinian people and the result of the ballot," AFP news agency reported.
Washington has not yet commented on the emerging results, but US President George W Bush warned on Wednesday he could not sanction a government led by Hamas in its present form.
"A political party, in order to be viable, is one that professes peace, in my judgment, in order that it will keep the peace," Mr Bush told the Wall Street Journal.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the Palestinian elections were "an important step toward the achievement of a Palestinian state," UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.
But the UN chief warned that "any group that wishes to participate in the democratic process should ultimately disarm because to carry weapons and participate in a democratic process and sit in parliament - there is a fundamental contradiction".
The European Union - the biggest provider of aid to the Palestinian Authority - said it would work with any Palestinian government which renounced violence.
"We are happy to work with any government if that government is prepared to work by peaceful means," said European External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4649606.stm Twenty years of indoctrinating hatred and murder in Palistinian schools and Israel can't understand how this happened? This election trashed the theory that "it is only a small minority of the Muslims (at least in Israel) that give the rest a bad name." This was an
election for crying out loud! Let me be the first to say,
GAME ON!The good news is that Israel now has a
government to target for payback and are no longer just fighting the idea that a "few" militants are engaged in. The next time Hamas fires a rocket into an Israeli town, we're going to see the Palestinian Authority's congress get blown to smithereens. Good freakin' riddance.
The pretending is
over. The Palestinians are now lead by people who represent their true desire. Fatah was willing to deal with Israel in to order to profit from corruption. Hamas (like most Palestinians) wants the total destruction of Israel. No more lies. It will be either result in real war or real peace, not a phony peace paraded around by Arafat and his successors.
This is quite the repudiation to the Bush doctrine, though the one time Bush is undeniably wrong, the democrats won't admit it. Bush's entire middle eastern strategy is to introduce democracy. He believes that through democracy, peace will occur because he thinks peace is the natural state of the free man.
The two most democratic states in the Middle East are Iran and Palestine. Coincidentily, both of those states elected radicals that are hell-bent for war. The tyrannical states of the Middle East are the ones on the back burner because a tyrant can keep them under control.
What does this mean? That the average Muslim in the street
wants war. They want death and carnage and violence. They want
millions of dead Jews and westerners. That is the choice they are making right now.
Bush won't admit, the democrats won't admit, but the truth is undeniable. So, where do we go from here?
-b0b
(...thinks these are interesting times we live in.)
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