Hamas Prepares a Celebration
Charles Johnson
Thu Aug 11, 2005 at 8:52 am PDT • Views: 246
Hamas militants make flags to fly over settlements.
GAZA (Reuters) - Palestinian workers on Thursday sewed thousands of Hamas flags that the Islamic militant faction plans to hoist over vacant Israeli settlements in occupied Gaza after their evacuation later this month.
The flourish of flags would fete the demise of settlements despised by Palestinians as symbols of Israeli occupation. But Hamas is also competing for post-pullout popularity and power with the mainstream Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Flagmaker Haitham Abu Khaled said he and others would make at least 10,000 green Hamas banners for the settlement takeover. In July, another flagmaker said Abbas’s Palestinian Authority had ordered up 60,000 national red-black-and-green banners.
“With the blood of our martyrs we kicked the enemies out,” read one new Hamas banner in Abu Khaled’s shop, alluding to a Palestinian revolt that raged from 2000 until a ceasefire this year that has been generally heeded by militant factions.
“Gaza is the start of liberation and it will not be the last departure of the occupation,” said another banner in the shop, whose walls were adorned by posters of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, assassinated by Israeli forces in 2004.
Frank says: