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My neighbor, a terrorist
Why is the revolutionary Naif Hawatmeh being invited to Palestine-controlled lands?
ERIC SILVER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Israel is preparing to allow radical Palestinian leader, Naif Hawatmeh, to move from Damascus to the Gaza Strip. This is despite the fact that his gunmen carried out one of the most notorious massacres of Israeli civilians — the raid on the northern town of Ma'alot in May, 1974, in which 24 schoolchildren were killed.
After the recent Palestinian elections Israeli
Prime Minister An Israeli army officer and a Shimon Peres an- Palestinian police officer stiake hands as
nounced that all SS^o^^^^^^^^^ ' members of the Patrol In the West Bank.
Palestine National Council would be free to return to territory imder Palestinian jurisdiction. Under the 1993 Oslo agreement, Israel still controls the border crossings from Egypt and Jordan.
The 483-member council, the old parliament in exile, is due to vote within two months on an Israeli demand to armul clauses in the 1964 Palestinian Charter that advocate the destruction of the Jewish state. It will meet in Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority President, Yasser Arafat, has promised to do his best to have the offending passages repealed. And Mr. Peres does not want to be accused of rigging the vote by keeping out Mr. Arafat's critics.
Mr. Hawatmeh, alone among left-wing rejectionist leaders, is eager to take up the offer. In a series of telephone interviews with the Israeli media, the head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine has annoimced that he wants "to live under Palestinian rule."
Sources in Mr. Peres' office indicated that the Prime Minister would raise no objection, if a request came from Mr. Arafat, as-
EriC Silver writes from Jerusalem.
suming that Mr. Hawatmeh was a member of the PNC. But in fact, Mr. Hawatmeh is not a member of the PNC, though some of his supporters are. Mr. Arafat could, however, co-opt him to what is still an unelected body. But will he?
Mr. Hawatmeh, a Christian Arab, was born in 1934 east of the Jordan river. He insists, however, that he has "a strong sense of belonging to the Palestinian land," which he says makes him a Palestinian rather than a Jordanian.
He is a Marxist who advocates a "people's war" designed to turn the Middle East into another Vietnam. Despite Ma'alot—and a 1974 raid on Beit She'an, another border town, which killed four Israeli civilians—he has always claimed that he only targets soldiers. Unlike George Habash's Popular Front, from which he broke away to a flurry of gimfire in 1969, the Democratic Front has refrained from terrorist acts outside the region.
In the 1950s, this compulsive revolutionary called for the overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy, which reciprocated by putting a price on his head. In 1963 he was thrown out of Iraq, to which he had fled, for plotting to assassinate the Jordanian prime minister.
In the early 1970s, Mr. Hawatmeh was one of the first Palestinian leaders to propose a "secular, democratic Palestine" in which. Jews would have their place, albeit as a tolerated minority. He still has not accepted Israel. Nor has he endorsed the Oslo agreement. □
Congress presses for deportation
B.C. man, 90, faces war crinnes hearing.
BROCK MACDONALD STAFF REPORTER
Anational Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) spokesman says immigration officials should press ahead with deportation proceedings against a 90-year-old Hope, B.C. man.
Retired Canadian National Railway worker Antanas Ken-stavicius is alleged to have been in command of a Lithuanian police unit which massacred 8,000 Jews during the Second World War.
Bemie Farber, CJC's national director of community relations in Toronto, said, "Our position is the same that it always is. He's an alleged war criminal and he should be speedily taken through the system."
But according to Steven Shul-man, the CJC's associate national director of community relations, proceedings against Mr. Kenstavicius may have to wait until a decision is made on the case of Josef Nemsila of Os-hawa, Ont. A Toronto adjudicator ruled that Mr. Nemsila, another alleged war criminal, had domicile status because he obtained resident status before April 10, 1978, when the Immigration Act changed. That Nemsila case went before a federal court for a judicial review earlier this week.
Mr. Shulman said that Mr. Kenstavicius would have the same protection under the old Immigration Act as Mr. Nemsila.
"The federal government has commenced the matter against him (Kenstavicius)," said Mr. Shulman. "But they are holding off holding a hearing because they don't want to fall into the same pit as the Nemsila case."
But the associate director pointed out that if the federal judge rules against the adjudicator's decision, that should leave the door wide open to proceed against Mr. Kenstavicius.
There has been media speculation as to how the immigration department was made aware of Mr. Kenstavicius. One report states that Israeli Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff tipped off federal
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