Just what Obama needs for his approval ratings: Hamas agreeing with him:

A leader of the Hamas terror group yesterday jumped into the emotional debate on the plan to construct a mosque near Ground Zero — insisting Muslims “have to build” it there.

“We have to build everywhere,” said Mahmoud al-Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and the organization’s chief on the Gaza Strip.

After saying what he really thinks in an unguarded moment, Obama is now trying to extract both feet from his momentarily incontinent mouth:

President Barack Obama, who recently voiced his support for the building of a Mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero in New York City, now says he was only expressing the importance of the legal right to religious freedom, not giving the project his stamp of approval.

But it is impossible to see the second paragraph here as anything less than presidential approval:

“As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country,” Obama said, weighing in for the first time on a controversy that has riven New York City and Americans.

“That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances,” he said. “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable.”

Meanwhile St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church has been trying to exercise its “right” to rebuild for 9 years and has seen nothing but a commitment to bureaucratic obstacles. But, then, it is Christian, so why would Obama or anyone else in his administration care?

The story of the tiny St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and its efforts to rebuild after the collapse of the World Trade Center is one of well-intentioned promises that led to endless negotiations, design disputes, delays and mounting costs.

Within a month of the attack on the trade center, Archbishop Demetrios, primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, pledged that the four-story church would rise “on the same sacred spot as a symbol of determined faith.” Gov. George E. Pataki agreed.

But today, the church exists only on blueprints. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the agency overseeing reconstruction, has not finalized the exchange of land needed to provide the congregation with a new home near ground zero. Until that deal is completed, the authority cannot proceed with building the southern foundation wall for the entire site, and cannot draw up designs for a bomb screening center for buses and trucks that would go under the new church.

And because security is crucial, delays in the vehicle security center mean delays in other parts of the site.