Israeli Forces yesterday arrested a prominent Hamas leader in the West Bank as sacked Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called for talks between his Islamic movement and Fatah. Hamas said in a statement that Saleh Al-Arori, a founder member of Hamas’ armed wing Ezz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, was arrested in his home village of Arora and taken to an unknown location for interrogation. Israeli security sources confirmed his arrest. Arori, 42, was released last March after serving 15 years in an Israeli jail. Hamas strongly condemned the arrest and charged that the “Israeli move was meant to empty the West Bank of sincere national voices opposing the (Israeli) occupation, and to pave the way for corrupt Palestinian figures attached to Israel to control the region.”In Gaza, Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahar was quoted as saying his group might carry out bombings and other attacks in the West Bank in response to an arrest sweep there. Dozens of Hamas activists have been arrested by the Palestinian security forces in the West Bank since the Gaza takeover. Other Hamas activists have hinted at a bombing campaign to try to destabilize the West Bank, a stronghold of Abbas’ Fatah movement. Zahar’s comment to the German news magazine Der Spiegel marked the first public confirmation of such a plan.
Hamas also reacted angrily yesterday to recommendations by the Palestine Liberation Organization that early elections should be held under changed rules that would effectively exclude the Islamists. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum described the proposal from the PLO Central Council, a body of which his movement is not a member, as “something which should be condemned.”
“The PLO Central Council has no legitimacy and any changes must be adopted by the Legislative Council,” the Palestinian Parliament in which Hamas won a large majority in January 2006 elections, Barhum said. “Hamas has not been consulted and that represents a sort of dictatorship that rides roughshod over Palestinian legitimacy by brutal means,” he added.
The PLO central council adopted the recommendation on Thursday, a day after Abbas, who is also PLO chairman, delivered a withering attack on Hamas in his first public comments since the IslamistsÂ’ bloody takeover of the Gaza Strip. The council called for early parliamentary and presidential elections on the basis of changed rules that would require all parties taking part to respect the PLO program, including its nearly 20-year-old support for a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, effectively excluding Hamas.
The recommendation still has to be officially promulgated and endorsed by Abbas. In a telephone conversation with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Haniyeh yesterday said: “The way out of the current situation is launching a Palestinian dialogue without preconditions.” He said dialogue should be resumed on the basis of “no loser and no winner and on the basis of a national unity government committed to Makkah agreement.”