The Hamas government of the Palestinian Authority underscored its terrorist nature by placing one of the more notorious terrorists in charge of its new Islamist security forces. Jamal Abu Samhadana, whose track record includes the murder of US Marines in Gaza during a diplomatic mission, will create and command the new force:

The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority on Thursday named a guerrilla leader whose group has attacked Israel, and has been blamed for bombing a U.S. convoy, to head a new security force made up of Islamic militants.

Interior Minister Saed Siyam issued a decree appointing Jamal Abu Samhadana, head of the Popular Resistance Committees, as director general of his ministry. Abu Samhadana, a former security officer who was dismissed for refusing to report for duty during the uprising against Israel, was given the rank of colonel.

His group is responsible for many of the homemade rockets launched at Israel in recent weeks. It also is suspected by some of involvement in the attack on a U.S. Embassy convoy in Gaza that killed three Marine security guards in October 2003.

In case anyone doubted the nature of this regime, Hamas has just made it clear. They will recast the Palestinian protostate into an Islamist rogue nation, complete with Islamofascist terrorists as an arm of government oppression and aggression. The selection of Samhadana has to be seen as a deliberate slap at the West, especially the US. However, the Hamas embrace for Islamist terror confirms everything that the US has claimed about the new Palestinian government. It also provides yet another diplomatic embarrassment for Russia, if they even have the capability of experiencing shame any longer.

The US should immediately challenge Qatar and Saudi Arabia for their support of this regime and their funding of its operations. We need to make clear that those people who participated in the murder of our Marines while on a mission of peace -- remember that the diplomatic mission was to help the Palestinians in Gaza! -- will never comprise any government with which we will engage. Those Marines and their families deserve that much for their sacrifice. We should point out that nations who pay the salaries of those murderers will not be viewed as friends by the US.

Addendum: I find it interesting that the Washington Post put this report on page A16. Doesn't the creation of an Islamist terrorist force by the PA, headed by a man responsible for the murders of three Marines, justify a little more visibility than that? I do have to commend the Post for at least reporting the development; so far the LA Times couldn't be bothered, and the New York Times puts the issue of the murdered Marines below the "friction" Samhadana's appointment and the Islamist force will create with Mahmoud Abbas. Also, the NYT never quite gets around to mentioning that the force will comprise Islamist terrorists -- instead, it calls them "militants". All the news that fits our mindset, eh?

UPDATE: Abbas has issued a veto in no uncertain terms:

In their sharpest power dispute yet, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday blocked Hamas' plans to set up a shadow security force, which was to be made up of militants and to be headed by the No. 2 on Israel's wanted list.

Abbas issued a presidential decree vetoing the decisions made a day earlier by Interior Minister Said Siyam of Hamas. As president, Abbas wields considerable power and has the right to approve or reject key appointments. ...

In a letter to Haniyeh on Friday, Abbas wrote that "we have learned through the media that the interior minister issued decisions violating the law. "

"All the officers, soldiers and security personnel are asked not to abide by these decisions and to consider them non-existent," Abbas said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

That may solve the surface problem, but it doesn't negate the fact that the Palestinians voted into power an Islamofascist terror operation that will use the organs of the PA to expand its holy war on Israel and the West.

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