BEIRUT - A moderate Hezbollah faction unveiled their new downtown Beirut McDonald's at a sparsely attended press conference Friday.
"We are the party of god," said spokes-sheik Abdul-Aliyy Qudamah at the tape-shooting ceremony. "Also the party of turning a moderate profit by selling delicious shakes, burgers, and heavily salted fries." After several minutes of firing AK-47s into the air, the sheik continued. "Let us therefore go inside and eat. A free glass of water to the first 100 customers, today only!"
Middle-eastern experts call the move by Hezbollah "a step in the right direction." "For a long time, we have hoped that more fast-food franchises would open in Beirut or the Beirut-area," confessed John B. Johnson, the James Johnson Chair of Economics at Yale University. "However, because of the nearly constant shelling, aerial attacks, and roaming murder squads the prospect always seemed more risky than any likely return on investment. So we're glad to finally see a franchise open: perhaps this is the beginning of a new era of capitalism in the middle-east."
Wall Street reacted by vomitting up a light snack of Gatorade and snack bars and then taking a quiet lie-down for the rest of the afternoon trading session.
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