http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1184168561673&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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.
<<pixel.gif>>
