Top Fatah leader returns to W. Bank after more than 40 years in exile

[Chris]

Top Fatah leader returns to W. Bank after more than 40 years in exile | Headlines | Jerusalem Post

Top Fatah leader returns to W. Bank after more than 40 years in exile
By AP AND JPOST.COM STAFF

A Fatah leader returned to the West Bank Wednesday after more than 40 years in exile. Mohammed Ghneim was one of Fatah's last holdouts in the diaspora. Only three of Fatah's two dozen top leaders refused to return with then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to the Palestinian territories after the 1993 Oslo Accords. At the time, Ghneim said he would leave exile in Tunis only to enter a Palestinian state. Recently he relented.

[Chris]

Israel allows Fatah hard-liner to enter West Bank following Abbas request

A top hard-line leader of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement returned home from exile Wednesday to a warm welcome. Muhammad Ghneim (also known as Abu Maher Ghneim), 71, one of the founders of Fatah in the mid 1960s alongside the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, arrived in Ramallah from Tunisia, after Israel gave him permission to enter the Palestinian territories following a personal request from Abbas to Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

His arrival marks an important turning point in Fatah politics, as Ghneim was opposed to the Oslo process and had refused to return home when Arafat first returned, also from Tunisia, in 1994. The Oslo interim accords, signed in 1993, launched a peace process that was to culminate in Palestinian statehood in the Gaza Strip and West Bank only, while Palestinian hardliners demanded a state in all of historic Palestine.

more............Israel allows Fatah hard-liner to enter West Bank following Abbas request - Haaretz - Israel News

[Chris]

Ramallah: Warm welcome for 'Abbas' heir'
Senior PA officials welcome movement leader Abu Maher Ghneim to Ramallah after 40 years in exile in Tunisia. Ghneim is considered most likely candidate to inherit Abbas
Ali Waked Published: 07.29.09, 22:06 / Israel News

Dozens of senior Palestinian Authority officials, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, welcomed senior Fatah official Abu Maher Ghneim to the West Bank city of Ramallah Wednesday, after 40 years in exile in Tunisia. Other senior movement officials, as well as Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, attended the event. Ghneim retuned to Ramallah ahead of the Fatah convention scheduled to take place in Bethlehem on August 4. Abbas called Ghneim's return "another landmark in the Palestinians' fight for liberation and the modernization of the Fatah movement."

Ghneim is considered by many as the leading candidate to inherit Abbas as Fatah leader, although he is approaching 70. In the ceremony Ghneim said that, "The Palestinians will eventually fulfill their dreams. Our road will be hard, but victory is near." He also laid a wreath on the grave of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

more............Ramallah: Warm welcome for 'Abbas' heir' - Israel News, Ynetnews

[Chris]

Looks like they are going to trade one terrorist for another.