Israeli army arrests Palestinian parliament speaker Dweik

An Israeli army force stormed shortly before midnight on Saturday the house of Aziz Dweik, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), in the West Bank city of Ramallah and arrested him.

Palestinian eyewitnesses and security sources reported that the Israeli army force raided Dweik's house in al-Masayef neighborhood in Ramallah, and took him from home to an Israeli army base outside the city.

The security sources in Ramallah said that the Israeli army force detained Dweik and conveyed him to a nearby Israeli army headquarters in the outskirts of Ramallah for questioning.

Residents in the area said that the Israeli army backed by jeeps and armored vehicles besieged the house of Dweik in the neighborhood and asked him to come out raising his hands and hand himself over to the soldiers.

They added that when Dweik refused to come out and hand himself over to the soldiers, the force stormed the house, searched into its content, arrested Dweik and confiscated documents and his private Laptop Computer.

The director of the speaker's office confirmed the arrest, saying that about 20 Israeli army vehicles surrounded the house of Dweik, a member of the governing Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas) before the arrest.

Media reports said the Israeli military confirmed the arrest but decline to give a reason.

Israeli forces have twice surrounded the speaker's house but failed to arrest him since June 29 when Israeli troops rounded up dozens of Hamas officials, including eight cabinet ministers, said the reports.

Dweik, a professor at al-Najjah University, was elected as the PLC lawmaker on Jan. 25, when his Hamas movement achieved an overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections, in which Hamas won 74 seats out of 132 that the PLC consists of.

He was chosen later by Hamas movement leadership to be the speaker of the parliament and was sworn in in mid-March.

Source: Xinhua