RAMALLAH, 24 August 2004 — A former Palestinian security minister who could be key to keeping order among rival factions in Gaza after an Israeli pullout held a fence-mending meeting yesterday with President Yasser Arafat, officials said. Mohammed Dahlan, a leading Palestinian voice calling for anti-corruption reforms and accused by some officials of instigating recent Gaza unrest that shook the Palestinian Authority, resigned from the Cabinet last September.
Speculation has been high that Arafat would try to patch up differences with the Gaza-based Dahlan in the run-up to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s planned withdrawal of settlers and soldiers from the area by the end of 2005. “There was a reconciliatory meeting. President Arafat met Mr. Dahlan at lunch in his office in the presence of Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Rawhi Fattouh and lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi,” one official said.
“It was a frank and good meeting in which President Arafat spoke of the necessity to maintain the unity of the Fatah movement and to resolve all problems within its leadership.” But the two men did not appear together publicly after the talks, with Dahlan leaving Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah through a back door. “It was an ordinary meeting. Why are you making a big deal of it,” Ashrawi told reporters, with a silent Dahlan at her side.
Dahlan, who commands the loyalty of hundreds of young Fatah activists in Gaza, is widely seen as key to any efforts to maintain law and order in the area after an Israeli withdrawal. After meeting Arafat, Dahlan held talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qorei amid speculation he would be offered a Cabinet post. Neither made any comment afterward.
Meanwhile, a top Palestinian religious scholar said yesterday a hunger strike by nearly 3,000 Palestinian prisoners was a form of jihad and any who die will be considered martyrs.
“This is a type of legitimate jihad,” Sheikh Tayseer Al-Tamimi, head of the Higher Council for Islamic Jurisprudence, told family members of the prisoners.
“If any one of them is martyred, God forbid, it will be as if he were martyred on the field of battle and the occupation authority will be considered the true killer.”
Around 2,800 prisoners, seen by Palestinians as symbols of resistance to Israeli occupation, are refusing food to demand wardens stop strip searches, allow more frequent family visits, improve sanitation and install public telephones.
Israeli officials call the liquids-only fast that began on Aug. 15 with 1,500 hunger strikers a ploy by prisoners to secure easier communication with militant groups waging a nearly four-year-old uprising. About 7,000 Palestinians, excluding common criminals, are held in Israeli jails.
Qorei said Palestinians would ask the United Nations to hold a special session to discuss the prisoners, and blamed Israel for any potential harm to them. “Israel bears full responsibility of any dangers that could harm the strugglers,” Qorei told reporters.
The Arab League will hold an emergency meeting today to discuss the issue of prisoners, Palestinian delegate Mohammad Sobeih, told AFP in Cairo yesterday. The meeting of permanent delegates, which will be chaired by the Moroccan representative, was called by the Palestinian Authority, Sobeih said.
Dozens of relatives and friends of Jordanian prisoners held in Israeli jails staged a sit-in outside UN headquarters in the Jordanian capital yesterday to press for their release. The protesters carried portraits of the prisoners and placards “we are the prisoners, not you,” and “we are fed up” from the lack of action to secure their release, an AFP correspondent said.
Islamist MP Azzam Huneidi joined the protest and told AFP: “We urge the government to put pressure on Israel to guarantee the release of the prisoners”. Government spokeswoman Asma Khodr meanwhile told a weekly press conference that the government was following up the prisoners’ issue “at the highest level of responsibility”.
