| [ 09/11/2010 – 05:27 PM ] |
|
|
|
JENIN, (PIC)– Ex-detainee and senior Hamas official Wasfi Qabha categorically denied Israeli media reports claiming that there were meetings between Israeli and Hamas officials in Jenin city, affirming that this news was fabrication aimed at disrupting the upcoming reconciliation meeting between his Movement and Fatah faction in Damascus. Qabha, a former Palestinian minister of prisoners’ affairs, said in a statement on Tuesday that what happened was that a large number of Israeli intelligence officers and troops violently stormed his home and other homes of Hamas officials in the neighborhoods of Basateen and Yehya Ayyash at dawn Thursday, particularly on October 28, and interrogated all of them. He explained that besides his house, the invading Israeli forces broke into the homes of Hamas officials Khaled Al-Hajj and Ghassan Al-Zugaibi in a violent way causing panic among children and women and forcing every family to go into one of their rooms. “The intelligence agents interrogated us and inquired about Hamas and its position in the West Bank and Jenin as well as its tense and distressed relations with the Palestinian authority, and asked us to convey threat messages to the Movement (Hamas) that it will not be allowed to resume its activities and will remain banned [in the West Bank]…and that the example of Gaza and what happened in Al-Khalil will never happen again,” the Hamas official elaborated. “I responded to the [Israeli] commander of the region that I am not the channel that will pass your massages to Hamas or the person who assumes such a job, and he threatened me with arrest and that I am under their surveillance,” he added. The Hamas official also said that the Israeli commander told him that he is banned by a court decision from entering his native village Barta’a Al-Sharqiya inside the area of the segregation wall. |
Qabha refutes claims about meetings between Hamas and Israeli officials.