The duly elected political party of Hamas has started planning the purchase of aircraft for suicide missions against Israeli skyscrapers, their "resistance" commander revealed yesterday. The New York Sun reports that Abu Abdullah, the commander of Hamas's Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, told a WorldNet Daily interviewer that all targets within their "dear Palestine" were legitimate for suicide attacks using airplanes as guided missiles, and that Hamas had already started investigating the necessary purchases:

Hamas is seeking the ability to attack Israel using small airplanes laden with explosives to be flown September 11-style into important targets, possibly Tel Aviv skyscrapers, a leader of Hamas's so-called military wing, Abu Abdullah, told World Net Daily yesterday. ...

Mr. Abdullah said Hamas would fly the planes into Jewish targets, possibly Tel Aviv skyscrapers.

"The goal is to have these planes carry maximum quantities of explosives and that they will be able to hit the targets that are fixed for its operation at a high level of accuracy. All the Zionist goals in our dear Palestine are legitimate. I estimate that this tool will not be used against regular targets. We will choose precious targets and I do not want to speak about strategic or any other targets. ...We know that the enemy is building new and high buildings in Tel Aviv."

The terror leader listed possible military targets, as well.

The solution to the immediate problem for the Israelis will probably come in an order to shoot down all aircraft entering Israeli airspace originating from the West Bank or Gaza Strip. That order may need to come soon, as other sources indicate that Hamas has already acquired three small airplanes from dealers in Eastern Europe and have had pilots trained for the mission in Syria, Sudan, and Iran.

Hamas needs to prepare for its war on Israel after it wrests control from Fatah in their brewing civil war. They have sought to supplant all instruments controlled by the PLO under Arafat through violence, both latent and actual. Hamas has used their position in Parliament to replace the security agencies of the Palestinian Authority, even though those functions fall under the authority of the directly-elected president, in this case Mahmoud Abbas. Like the Nazis before them, they exploited an election in order to gain legitimacy to establish a highly illegitimate and violent dictatorship, and they have done so in the same manner -- by undermining the executive branch.

One would hope that Western voices would not be silenced through the exploitation of an election, but the New York Times never fails to disappoint in its capacity for capitulation. Today, the Gray Lady issues another missive demanding that the West respect the democratic choice of the Palestinian people and engage Hamas, even while the terrorists have obviously undertaken a coup against the PA:

Mr. Bush handed Mr. Olmert the perfect welcome-to-Washington gift on Tuesday: conditional support for Israel's plans. Mr. Olmert wants to go ahead with Ariel Sharon's misbegotten plan to unilaterally redraw the borders of what could eventually be Palestine. The key word here is unilaterally, because the Israelis are prepared to do this without any input from the Palestinians. They would be left to try to cobble together a country out of whatever remained behind.

To a significant degree, the Palestinians put themselves in this spot by electing Hamas to run their government, and the Bush administration is right to refuse to legitimize a government dedicated to the destruction of Israel. But Mr. Bush should not punish the Palestinian people by endorsing any unilateral proposal — doing that would punish them for exercising their democratic right to vote.

Our refusal to engage Hamas has more basis than their anti-Israeli stance, although that would be enough. We refuse to recognize terrorist groups as legitimate political entities, and for good reason. Giving legitimacy to Hamas only encourages the formation of more terrorist groups making more demands and creating more havoc. Whether or not a terrorist group has enough popularity to gain seats in an election has no bearing on that policy -- in fact, it arguably makes it more necessary than ever.

Groups that buy planes as a means of replaying 9/11 and targeting civilians on a mass scale do not deserve recognition. The people who elect such terrorists deserve marginalization, and that isolation serves to deliver a strong message that we have no interest in engaging terrorists or their enablers. Terrorists do not make partners for peace in any event, a lesson the Paper of Record should have learned from the long and frustrating reign of Yasser Arafat in the West Bank and Gaza.

When the Palestinians want peace, they will elect statesmen rather than terrorists to office. Until then, Israel has every right to make unilateral decisions about their borders and their interaction with a population who elects terrorists to represent them.

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