Exiled Palestinian leader due to visit West Bank
Friday, July 13th, 2007 | 
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Posted by John under: Perilous Times,Syria and Damascus
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) – Nayef Hawatmeh, a veteran of the Palestinian national movement, is next week expected to visit the Palestinian territories for the first time, an official said Thursday.
AFP/File Photo: Nayef Hawatmeh, a veteran of the Palestinian national movement, is seen here in 2005. Hawatmeh…
Perilous Times
“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,deceiving, and being deceived”
—2 Timothy 3:13″
Syria and Damascus
“The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.”
—Isaiah 17:1
Damascus-based Hawatmeh will attend a summit on Wednesday in Ramallah of the central committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, an umbrella organisation grouping several movements and headed by president Mahmud Abbas.
Hawatmeh founded and is still head of the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), which broke away in 1969 from the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
“Israel has given a green light for his return and he will take part at the central committee summit,” a senior DFLP official told AFP.
No immediate comment was available from Israeli officials.
Abbas’s aide Nabil Amr confirmed that “the Palestinian Authority has been exerting every effort to let the secretary general of the DFLP to return to his country and attend the summit next week.”
Amr branded as “crucial” next week’s summit where members will discuss preparations for the general elections expected to be called following the Islamist Hamas movement’s violent seizure of the Gaza Strip last month.
Born in 1938 to a Greek Orthodox family in Salt, Jordan, Hawatmeh opposed the 1993 Oslo accords between the PLO and Israel.
Next week’s visit will be Hawatmeh’s first to the Palestinian territories since they were occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.
In 1999, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak retracted his decision to allow Hawatmeh to come after he had declared publicly the right of Palestinians “to fight everywhere across the occupied territory.”