Today's issue of The Forward says that Palestinian-American leaders will warn Hamas against turning the West Bank and Gaza into an Islamic theocracy. The Americans say that they will push for laws favoring American-style church-state separation, pluralism, equality and inclusiveness. Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine, at recent Washington press conference introduced a new document, A Vision for the State of Palestine. The document, prepared before the recent PA election when it was still expected that the secularist Fatah movement would control the new parliament, sets out the suggested core values and principles on which a future Palestinian state should be founded.
Meanwhile, in Israel, according to Ynetnews, three right-wing parties yesterday asked the Central Elections Committee to disqualify the United Arab List-Ta'al party from running in the upcoming Israeli elections. Arab list chairman Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsur, in a press conference Wednesday, said that the rule on earth, or at least the rule in Arab and Muslim lands should be led by the Caliph. National Union-NRP Knesset Member Yitzhak Levy wrote to Judge Dorit Beinish, head of the the Elections Committee, saying that Sarsur's remarks called for Islamic rule in the state of Israel.
