Hamas calls for more suicide bombings

I'm sure that the press and Bush and Sharon have much to be optimistic about. All you have to do it close your eyes and click your heels three times, and say "Peace is around the corner. Peace is around the corner..." - EoZ

As the Palestinian Central Election Committee was holding a press conference in Ramallah on Monday to announce the final results of the election for the chairmanship of the Palestinian Authority, hundreds of students attended a rally organized by Hamas at Bir Zeit University, where they called for more suicide attacks against Israel.

'Oh suicide bomber, wrap yourself with an explosive belt and fill the scene with blood,' chanted a chorus of five male students at the rally, held by the Hamas-affiliated Islamic List to mark the ninth anniversary of the killing of Hamas bomb-maker Yehya Ayyash, better known as 'The Engineer.'

Green Hamas flags and large portraits of slain Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi decorated the campus and the hall where some 500 activists gathered to honor the former university student responsible for a string of suicide bombings that killed at least 100 Israelis in the mid-90s.

Organizers said the timing of the parley was not linked to the election of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as Yasser Arafat's successor. Speakers refrained from making any reference to the election, pointing out the event, approved by the university administration, had been planned long before the vote. They also refused to comment on the results of the vote.

'Ayyash is alive and don't say that he's dead,' a speaker told the crowd, who responded by shouting 'Allahu Akbar! (God is great).' Another speaker described the Hamas bomb-maker as 'the engineer of death for those who deserved to die.'

The students also paid tribute to anther colleague, Izzaddin al-Masri, who carried out the suicide attack in Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in 2001, killing 15 people and wounding more than 100.