Israelis kidnapping Hamas officials as hostages, says UK MP
Palestine-Israel-UK, Politics, 5/28/2007

Chair of Britain-Palestine all-party parliamentary group Friday condemned Israel's latest kidnapping of elected Palestinian representatives and government ministers as both "illegal and counterproductive."

"This is not the first time Israel has taken such measures. They abducted many elected Palestinian representatives last year and many of them remain in prison," Richard Burden said.

He said that some militant Palestinian groups had been condemned for taking hostages, but the abductions "suggest that Israel is in the business of taking hostages of its own." Burden, who is a backbench Labor MP last traveled to the occupied territories in January in a visit organized by the charity Forward Thinking to help promote dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.

In a letter to the Guardian Friday, he said that during his visit with four parliamentary colleagues, he met Palestinian education minister Nasser al-Shaer, who is one of the latest victims of the Israeli series of kidnappings.

"By seizing such people, Israel is only making matters worse. What the Education Minister wanted to talk to us about "was not how to go to war with Israel, but how to promote a durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians," Burden said.

He said that Shaer was also among Palestinian Ministers seized by Israelis last year, but that they had to release him after they discovered he was not a member of Hamas.

"What they are doing is illegal and MPs here have raised the issue with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which upholds the rights of elected parliamentarians to do their jobs free from persecution," the Labor MP also said.

Previous Stories:
  UK official defies ban on Hamas; to press boycott end of Palestinians   (5/7/2007)
  UK doctors call for boycott of Israeli Medical Association   (4/23/2007)
  Abbas meets Blair   (2/21/2007)

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