Word: haniyeh
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Dates: during 2006-2006
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...Still, following their talks with Blair, it was announced that Olmert and Abbas were willing to hold direct talks with one another. More significantly, perhaps, on Monday Abbas concluded an agreement with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, to form a government of national unity, on a political platform that includes the 2002 Beirut proposal of the Arab League - a document that offers Israel full peace with the Arab world in exchange for a withdrawal to its 1967 borders...
...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...
...Haniyeh was able to secure the journalists' freedom, but at a high price: he has agreed to give these armed extremists a role in deciding the fate of the Israeli soldier, these sources said. The kidnappers are more extreme in their approach to Israel (Prime Minister Haniyeh is a moderate within Hamas), and they will undoubtedly raise the ante for the release of the 18-year-old corporal, who is said to be in good shape even though his captors have so far refused to offer any proof he is still alive. So far, various mediators, including the Egyptians...
...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...