Friday, March 23, 2007

Freed Hamas Leader Shuns Terror Tactics

Taken from The Sunday Telegraph, 17/03/2007
By Joshua Mitnick in Aroura

A prominent Hamas leader released after 15 years in Israeli jails is urging the Islamic group to abandon bus bombings and start talking to the Jewish state.

The last time Salah Arouri was free, he was a Hamas commander raising money and winning recruits for the violent militant group, on the fringe of the first Palestinian uprising.

As his first five-year sentence was extended by successive Israeli military orders, he became the voice for thousands of Palestinian inmates in talks with the Israeli prison authorities and rubbed shoulders with almost all of Hamas's jailed leaders. He was released unexpectedly last weekend, on the eve of Hamas's unity coalition agreement with Fatah which made it the senior partner in the Palestinian government.

The accord has been criticised by Israel, America and Europe for not recognising the Jewish state or committing to honour peace agreements with it, and for failing to renounce violence.

But Arouri, 40, insisted that Hamas's rise to the forefront of Palestinian politics, triggered by its election victory last year, signalled a shift away from violence in favour of political process and the attempt to establish a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He also admitted that the campaign of bomb attacks against Israeli civilians had harmed the Palestinians' cause, and expressed hope that it would end.

"We are harmed if we target civilians," he said, adding that political progress would be easier if Israel would also show restraint. "At the end of the day, the fruit of military actions is political action," he said. "All wars end with truces and negotiations."

Arouri's release was celebrated on the front pages of Palestinian newspapers. He gave a press conference and received visits from leading Palestinian figures spanning the political spectrum.

Yet the more moderate tone he now adopts towards the struggle with Israel, compared with that of some Hamas leaders, suggests a possible advantage for Israel in releasing others among its 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, whose views may have changed during their incarceration - like the former IRA and Protestant paramilitary prisoners who eventually backed political engagement in Northern Ireland.

"The development of the Islamic movement from a militarilyoriented party into a political movement is a desirable outcome," he said. "It is a natural process."

In prison Arouri learned Hebrew and took correspondence courses on Israeli politics through the Hebrew University. As he held court after his release, with male relatives and acquaintances seated around a table spread with coconut chocolate bars, he insisted that Hamas was now resigned to the de facto acceptance of peace accords reached with Israel under the leadership of the rival Fatah faction.

Hamas's leaders have refused to recognise the legitimacy of Israel or to discuss the possibility of negotiations with it, offering instead an extended truce in return for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from all territory occupied since 1967.

In the policy guidelines of the unity government, confirmed by the Palestinian parliament yesterday, Hamas would agree only a vague reference to respecting the peace agreements with Israel negotiated under Fatah. Arouri said: "Israel is a reality, but not a legitimate reality."

However, Arouri, who was consulted about the unity deal while in prison, added: "It is political participation, whether it is labelled as respect of agreements, or resolutions, or commitment to summit decisions."

Hamas has demanded the release of more than 1,000 security prisoners like Arouri in return for Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit, abducted last June at the Gaza Strip border. Israel is thought to be in indirect talks with the Islamic militants on a prisoner swap, but a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, denied that Arouri's release was connected. Returning last week to his home village of Aroura, a West Bank hamlet of 3,000, Arouri realised how much he had missed while in jail. Village elders, including his father, had died, while he had never met young relatives such as his 11-year-old niece Aya.

Some are tipping him as a shoo-in on Hamas's parliamentary slate in the next election. But Arouri admitted that more pressing was his imminent wedding to the woman who has been waiting years for his prison release. "All I can see is the near future, and that is my wedding tonight," he said. Was he nervous? "No," he replied with a grin. "In prison, you learn how to keep cool under pressure."

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