GAZA CITY, 7 August 2006 — Israeli forces arrested Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Aziz Dweik from his residence in the West Bank city of Ramallah early yesterday, security sources said. Meanwhile, Israeli military operations continued in the southern Gaza Strip, part of a monthlong offensive.
The director of the speaker’s office and Palestinian security officials said about 20 Israeli Army vehicles surrounded the house of Dweik and took him into custody.
The Israeli military said that as a Hamas leader, he was a target for arrest.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday denounced Dweik’s arrest and called for an international conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Members of the Hamas-led Palestinian government are “regrettably either in detention or hunted — most of those in the West Bank are in detention and those in Gaza are hunted and out of sight because Israeli aircraft pursue them from one place to another,” Abbas told reporters in Sanaa.
More than 65 members of the Palestinian government or Parliament are now in Israeli detention, Abbas said at the end of a visit to Yemen during which he met with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Abbas said the international community should realize that a solution to the Palestinian problem is the basis for solving other problems in the Middle East.
“(We must) go to an international conference directly ... in order to tackle the root of the problem and find a solution for it and for the entire region,” he said.
On June 29, Israeli forces in the West Bank rounded up dozens of Hamas officials, including eight Cabinet ministers. One was released earlier this week.
Since the original sweep, Israeli forces have twice surrounded Dweik’s house but failed to arrest him.
In a statement, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas called the arrest “another crime of piracy by the (Israeli) occupation against the elected representatives of our people” and called for international parliamentary action to win his release and that of other arrested officials.
The roundup was part of Israel’s campaign against Hamas since a June 25 cross-border raid in which Hamas-lined fighters killed two Israeli soldiers and captured another.
The group said Saturday it would not allow Red Cross officials to visit the captured soldier. Israel has demanded the release of the soldier and an end to the firing of homemade rockets at Israel by Gaza fighters.
The Red Cross requested last week to visit Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier being held by Hamas-linked fighters. A Red Cross official said the request was made in a meeting with Palestinian factions in Gaza, but it was denied without explanation.
On Saturday, Hamas said in a statement that such a visit was “not appropriate at a time when more than 10,000 Palestinian families are denied to visit their prisoners.”
The army could not immediately provide details of its policy on prisoner visits, but said in principle visits were allowed, subject to unspecified security considerations.
Israeli Cabinet minister Ophir Pines said there could be no comparison between Hamas holding a soldier in a secret hide-out without access to humanitarian organizations and Israel’s custody of Palestinians accused of terrorist activity.
“We allow people to see Palestinian prisoners,” he told The Associated Press. “We allow in many cases their families to visit, we hold them in prisons, people know where they are and we allow access by international organizations.”
Hamas has said it would release the soldier if Israel frees some Palestinian prisoners, particularly women and children. Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau in Syria said Saturday, “The exchange of prisoners is not coming soon.”
Israeli ground forces have moved in and out of several parts of the territory regularly since then, confronting armed Palestinians and leaving behind considerable destruction.
— With input from agencies
