Aziz Duwaik

Aziz Duwaik عزيز دويك
Interim President of the Palestinian National Authority (disputed)
Incumbent
Assumed office 15 January 2009
Prime Minister	Ismail Haniyeh Salam Fayyad
Preceded by	Mahmoud Abbas*
Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council
Incumbent
Assumed office 29 March 2006
Preceded by	Rawhi Fattouh
Personal details
Born	1950 (age 60–61)
Political party	Hamas
Alma mater	University of Pennsylvania
Religion	Sunni Islam
*Mahmoud Abbas' term as President expired 15 January 2009, since then Aziz Duwaik has been recognised as President by the Ismail Haniyeh's government in the Gaza Strip, while Mahmoud Abbas is recognised as President by Salam Fayyad's government in the West Bank

Aziz Duwaik (Arabic: عزيز دويك‎, ʿAzīz Duwayk) (born c. 1950) has been the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) since his election to that post on 18 January 2006. He was imprisoned in Israel on 6 August 2006 on charges of being a member of Hamas, but he was released on 22 June 2009. Some Palestinians consider Duwaik, as speaker of the PLC, to be the acting President of the Palestinian National Authority, since the elected term of Mahmoud Abbas officially expired on 9 January 2009.^[1][2]

Education and family life

Prior to becoming involved in political office, Duwaik was a professor of urban geography at An-Najah National University in Nablus on the West Bank. He holds a PhD in Regional and Architecture Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.^[1]

Married, with seven children, one of his daughters is a school principal, and three of his other children are students of medicine or pharmacy. Duwaik's wife runs a daycare centre out of the family's house named Marj az-Zahour, after the place in Lebanon where her husband spent a year in exile in 1992.^[1]

Political views

Dweik has told journalists that he views the Hamas charter's call for the creation of a Palestinian state in all of Palestine, including Israel, to be "nothing but a dream, and unrealistic," and he believes that Hamas is aiming for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.^[1] He has never been accused of involvement in terrorism.^[1] His primary focus since his release from prison has been reconciling the Hamas and Fatah factions who have been engaged in a civil conflict, the result of which has been a split in the ruling PNA government, with Hamas ruling in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank.^[1]

Political career

Dweik has been associated with The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas since as early as 1992. At that time, Hamas was an organization that had been banned by Israel and he never admitted to being a member, though he spoke to Western journalists about Hamas as someone who held knowledge of the organization and its aims. Dweik was careful to dissociate himself from the military actions carried out by Hamas, even though Hamas's early military raids, described as "effective, and deadly," were directed at Israeli occupation forces, not at civilians.^[3] In 1992, a separate military wing was established called the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades so that the political wing of Hamas could be distinguished from the military one.^[1]

Exile to Lebanon

In 1992, Duwaik was among 415 Palestinians associated with Hamas or the Islamic Jihad who were arrested and exiled to southern Lebanon by the Israeli administration of Yitzhak Rabin.^[1] Rabin acknowledged that those exiled were not armed militants, but people who represented the Hamas "infrastructure".^[1] Driven to the northern border with Lebanon, he and the others were dropped off in the de-militarized zone between the two countries and warned not to come back. Lebanon refused to allow them entry, so Dweik and his compatriots remained in no-man's land. They lived in tents and built their own showers and also set up an organized hierarchical system whereby Dweik was in charge of the deportees from the West Bank, while Abdel Aziz Rantisi was in charge of those from the Gaza Strip. After a year, Rabin agreed to let them come back.^[1]

2006 elections

Dweik ran for a position in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in the January 2006 elections on the Change and Reform list, made up primarily of Hamas members. The victory of Hamas in the elections prompted Israel and the United States to cut off ties to the new government, maintaining contact only with Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian National Authority, and not Ismail Haniya, its new Prime Minister, or any other elected parliamentarians from Hamas, including Dweik.^[4] The US immediately suspended aid to the new government, and some other Western governments were considering the same, when Dweik was sworn in as Speaker of the House on 29 March 2006. During the proceedings, which were held by video conference due to a ban on travel instituted by Israel and affecting Hamas members, among the things Dweik said were: "A hungry man is an angry man [...] We hope the world will not allow the Palestinian people to suffer, because this will only make people more radical." He also said: "My message to Israel is to put an end to the occupation, and then there will be no fighting."^[4]

In an April 2006 interview with Ynet, the Israeli media outlet, Dweik responded to a question regarding Israel's announcement of a plan to collapse the new government using economic and other means as follows:

"I say that the occupier has, according to treaties, obligations to the occupied. I also say that the money the Israelis say they don't want to transfer [$55 million in tax revenues^[4]] is not Israeli money, it is Palestinian money that Israel collects from the Palestinians, and which it is obligated to give to the Authority. If Israel preserves this stance, then the law will have to decide between us over this issue. This plan is another Israeli attempt to harm the democratic process and its outcomes, a process that was free, transparent, and which took place before the whole world's eyes. This is an attempt to harm us, but we are lions, not ants. It's not easy to harm us."^[5]

2006 arrest

Duwaik was arrested by Israel on 29 June 2006 as part of Israel's Operation Summer Rains. He was later released and then rearrested 6 August 2006. Duwaik says he was severely beaten while in custody, and his lawyers say that he was held in unsanitary conditions.^[6] In August 2006, Duwaik was charged in Israel for being a member of Hamas and for being in contact with Khaled Meshaal, the exiled secretary-general of Hamas. He expressed his view that this was a "political trial" and stated that he did not recognize it. He accused Israel of using "political blackmail", and said that his arrest was in violation of international law.^[6] Duwaik (along with a number of other Palestinian ministers and parliament members) was imprisoned in spite of his parliamentary immunity.^[7]

2009 release

Israel released Duwaik two months before the end of his three year sentence. Released from Hadarim prison near Tel Aviv, he was then transferred to an Israeli military checkpoint outside the city of Tulkarm. He stated, "Any person deprived of his freedom feels an enormous hardship." Duwaik's release came after a military tribunal near Ramallah which rejected an application by prosecutors to keep him detained, presumably because of his bad health.^[8]

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Patrick Martin (July 18, 2009). "Fancy that, a moderate in Hamas". The Globe and Mail (Toronto). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/mideast-notebook/fancy-that-a-moderate-in-hamas/article1200923/. Retrieved 2009-08-03. 
2. ^ "Hamas Says Dweik “Real President” until Elections are Held". Al-Manar. June 25, 2006. http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=91562&language=en. Retrieved 2009-08-03. 
3. ^ Suicide bombings were only adopted as a tactic by the armed wing beginning in 1994 and were officially foresworn by 2005.[1]
4. ^ ^{a b c} Greg Myre (March 29, 2006). "Hamas Cabinet Is Sworn In, Widening Break With the Israelis". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/international/middleeast/30palestinians.html. Retrieved 2009-08-03. 
5. ^ Waked, Ali (2006-02-16). "'Our model is Muhammad': Hamas candidate for PA parliament speaks to Ynet about his views of the future". Ynetnews. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3217215,00.html. Retrieved 2008-04-19. 
6. ^ ^{a b} "Hamas speaker charged in Israel". BBC News. 2006-08-22. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5275340.stm. Retrieved 2008-04-19. 
7. ^ "The Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly president, Rene van der Linden, slammed yesterday Israel's arrest of the speaker of the Palestinian legislative council, Aziz Dweik, and called for his immediate release. 'All legitimately elected parliamentarians enjoy parliamentary immunity unless and until they are divested of it by their own parliaments,' van den Linden said." Support up for Hamas vow to destroy Israel
8. ^ Hamas parliament Speaker released BBC News. BBC MMVI, 2009-06-23. Retrieved on 2009-06-23.

Political offices
Preceded by Rawhi Fattouh	Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council 2006 – present	Succeeded by Incumbent
Preceded by Mahmoud Abbas	President of the Government of Gaza 2009 – present	Succeeded by Incumbent

Persondata
Name	Duwaik, Abdel Aziz
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