Hamas: And So, It Begins...

From today's NY Daily News:

Leaders won't recant vow to destroy Israel

Mahmoud Zahar, a leading candidate for prime minister, also put the kibosh on future peace talks with the Jewish state.
"Israel has nothing to give for the Palestinians," Zahar said. "All the time they were wasting our time ... implementing nothing."
In Syria, the No. 2 man in the Hamas leadership said wiping Israel off the map remains their chief goal.
"As long as there is occupation and so long as our people's rights are usurped, our stand will remain as it is," Moussa Abu Marzouk said. "We would resist the [Israeli] occupation to restore our rights."

Well, high marks for honesty...better, in my eyes, than Arafat speaking peace in English and war in Arabic. And in the same way the Nazis built rapidly for war after the election of Hitler, Hamas is wasting no time either:

The Islamic militant group Hamas was ready to merge armed factions including its military wing to form an army to defend the Palestinian people, a senior Hamas leader said on Saturday.
"We are willing to form an army like every country ... an army to defend our people against aggression," Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal told a news conference in Damascus after the group swept Palestinian parliamentary elections.

Speaking from Damascus, eh? Looks like the Syrians are on the verge of increasing their sphere of influence by setting up another rump state, with Hamas running the territories the way Hezbollah controls much of Lebanon. With Hezbollah shelling them from one side, Hamas starting a jihad army on the other, Iran building nukes in the distance, and Syria cheering them on in the foreground (with their eyes hungrily on Iraq), how far are we from another 1967 War, where the Israelis, seeing their enemies encircling them, decide to strike out first? Will the 40-year anniversary of the Six-Day War be greeted by...yet a new Arab-Isreali war?

What a sad thought, yet now the winds of war are blowing heavy, to a gale, with no calm in sight...

NY Daily News here: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/386433p-327900c.html
Reuters here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060128/wl_nm/mideast_meshaal_dc_2