(New York Times) Stephen Farrell - Yehya Sinwar, 49, who was arrested in 1988, is the most senior of the Hamas members freed. As he was driven to Gaza City on Tuesday, he saw thousands of Hamas fighters lining the highway, carrying automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades and driving pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns. The question is whether he and his fellow prisoners, many of them military-wing hard-liners, will now argue for Hamas to pursue the course of intifada and bombs, or choose a new direction for a new era. "We turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and to academies for study....I studied the history of the Jewish people, and you can say I am a specialist in the Jewish people's history," he said.
2011-10-21 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive