Word: haniyeh
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...News journalists were freed on Sunday in Gaza after a complex deal was hammered out between the kidnappers and the Hamas-led government of Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh. The negotiations brought an end to the two-week-long hostage ordeal, but it may complicate efforts to free another captive - Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit - held by Palestinian militants...
...Palestinian security sources close to the negotiators told TIME that the two Fox Newsmen - reporter Steve Centanni, 60, from Washington, D.C., and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36 - were kidnapped from Gaza to embarrass Haniyeh's government. The militants, who earlier identified themselves as members of the previously unknown Holy Jihad Brigades, were enraged with fellow Hamas militants because they too had joined in the daring capture on June 25th of Corp. Shalit, in which Palestinian gunmen tunneled under a wall and attacked an Israeli army post. But according to these security sources, the militant groups fell out after Hamas...
...change the reality that Palestinian voters had elected Hamas as their government - and polls show its support has actually grown during the current showdown. But the financial chokehold and the rising chaos it provoked has clearly weakened the authority of both President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh condemned the capture of Corporal Shalit, which surprised him as much as it surprised the Israelis, and demanded his safe return to Israel. Palestinian observers believe more radical elements in Hamas launched the operation that captured Shalit in part to undermine moves by Haniyeh and other pragmatists toward agreement...
...Abbas and Haniyeh won't be the only losers if the crisis ends with a prisoner exchange. Israel, for all the violence it unleashed on Gaza in the wake of Shalit's capture, will have been seen in Palestinian eyes to have been humbled. And U.S. influence in the region is unlikely to be boosted...
TIME's Phil Zabriskie talked with Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for and adviser to Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, on July 1, at the Prime Minister's office in Gaza City. Here are excerpts from his interview...