Israel to send list of a further 120 'wanted' Al-Aqsa members who have been officially pardoned, Al-Aqsa leader says

16 July 2007

Nablus - Ma'an - An official in Fatah's Al-Aqsa Brigades in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, Iyad 'Aynabousi, said on Monday that Israel is expected to send a second list of "wanted" Palestinians, comprising 120 names, to be added to the first list receiving a pardon from Israel.

He added that the activists, all from the Al-Aqsa Brigades, will surrender their weapons to the Palestinian Authority as the result of a ceasefire agreement with the Israeli side. He demanded security measures and guarantees that secure the protection of these wanted men against the "Israeli occupation forces and Hamas movement."

In a press conference held in Nablus, the brigades' leader demanded that all wanted Palestinian activists be included in the amnesty list in order for the ceasefire to be implemented completely without exceptions.

In the same regard, the leader of the Gaza-based Al-Aqsa Brigades, Abu Khalid Hijazi, warned the brigades' members of possible Israeli treachery.

He said in a press release received by Ma'an: "We have lately noticed trivialities by some people offering to buy the brigades' weapons under the pretext that they are now safe. Those people have seemingly forgotten that there is no safety under occupation, which still assaults our strugglers, specifically in the West Bank. They have also forgotten what had happened to our brothers in the Muqata'a in Ramallah following the martyrdom of President Yasser Arafat."

Hijazi was referring to the Israeli military's siege of the late Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, in the Muqata'a, or Palestinian Authority security and presidential compound, in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2002.

Hijazi declared his brigades' condemnation and astonishment at the selling and buying of the armed resistance's weapons. He depicted every person who sells his arms as "irrelevant" to the Al-Aqsa Brigades, affirming that the brigades will "deter all those who attempt to defame and distort the honorable resistance's weapons," through exchanging them with money.