Fancy that, a moderate in Hamas
HEBRON, West BANK – I first met Aziz Dweik in the winter of 1991-92. The man who is the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and who was released from an Israeli prison last Tuesday, was then teaching urban geography at an-Najah University in Nablus.
He was pointed out to me as the man who spoke for Hamas in his home town of Hebron, which is why I went looking for him.
Hamas, an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, was only four years old at the time, having been established at the start of the first intifada , or Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
The Muslim Brotherhood had long existed in the Palestinian territories, and Hamas was really just the Brotherhood with a new name. In those early years, it encouraged Palestinian youth, armed only with rocks, to stand up against Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
Hundreds of those youths were killed, but the world got the message: Palestinians were willing to lay down their lives in pursuit of freedom.
The impact was far greater than all the years of terrorism carried out by the many factions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
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