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Jul. 14, 2007 13:33 | Updated Jul. 15, 2007 1:00 Government permits return of DFLP head Nayef Hawatmeh By JPOST.COM STAFF In a move aimed at helping Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gain approval of the new PA government, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will approve allowing Nayef Hawatmeh, the Damascus-based leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP,) to travel to Ramallah on Wednesday to participate in a meeting of the PLO's central assembly, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Officials said that Abbas's office requested permission to allow Hawatmeh into the West Bank, and that the final decision would be made by Olmert in conjunction with the Defense Ministry. The officials said that in the mid-1990s the government already decided that Hawatmeh could travel to the West Bank. As a result, cabinet approval now is not necessary. Hawatmeh's trip to Ramallah would be his first to the West Bank since the Six Day War. The DFLP, a Marxist-Leninist group, was founded in 1969. After Jordan expelled the PLO in 1970, the DFLP operated out of Lebanon, then Syria. One of the group's most notorious attacks was the raid on a school in Ma'alot in 1974, when a squad of DFLP terrorists took over a school filled with dozens of children on a field trip from Safed. Twenty-six people, most of them children, were killed in the attack. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i said on Friday that Israel should allow Hawatmeh into Ramallah since this could help strengthen Abbas in face of the growing Hamas threat in the Gaza Strip. Vilna'i said that since Hawatmeh wouldn't be entering Israel and would only be in the West Bank for a short time, Israel should allow him to visit. "Even though he was a man who dealt in terror, under the current circumstances he appears to be someone who can assist in shifting the balance in favor of the moderate Palestinian front," Vilna'i said. Environment Minister Gideon Ezra said he was in favor of letting the DFLP leader visit the West Bank. He said that Israel must help the PA "in every move against Hamas." Construction and Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim, however, opposed Hawatmeh's possible arrival, saying that Israel had a "bloody score to settle with the man responsible for the slaughter in Ma'alot." Israel Beiteinu's Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Saturday, according to Israel Radio, that Israel should let Hawatmeh enter so that he could then be arrested and tried for murder. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]