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Hamas Leader To Return To Jordan Under Deal
DUBAI, June 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A senior member of the Palestinian Islamic activist group Hamas will retain his role within the movement under a deal allowing his return to Jordan from Thailand after a two-week standoff, the group said Friday.
The accord "stipulates that Ibrahim Ghoshe halt all activity within Jordan in the name of Hamas, and not that he renounces his role and position within the movement," political bureau chief Khaled Meshaal told Abu Dhabi TV.
"Ghoshe committed himself not to take part in any activity of a political or media-related nature in the name of Hamas on the Jordanian scene," Meshaal - himself once a Hamas leader - explained in a separate interview with Qatar's satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera.
He said Amman's original demand had been for Hamas spokesman Ghoshe to resign from the movement, which is banned in Jordan, before being allowed back into his native country.
Jordan's Information Minister, Saleh Kallab, said Thursday that Amman had accepted Ghoshe's return after he accepted, in a written message, to freeze his membership in Hamas.
"Mr. Ghoshe sent the Jordanian government a hand-written document in which he pledges to freeze all political, media and organizational activity within Hamas," Kallab said.
The minister said he expected Ghoshe to return "within 48 hours", after leaving for Bangkok on Thursday.
Government officials said Jordan's King Abdullah II instructed the government to allow Ghoshe's return to Amman "where he will be able to live as an ordinary citizen."
A text of the document received by AFP in Amman and bearing the signature of Ghoshe said the Hamas leader left "of his own desire" for Thailand. "I will freeze my political activity in Hamas," it said.
Ghoshe had been stranded at Amman's Queen Alia Airport since flying back unexpectedly on June 14th from exile in Doha, Qatar, in defiance of a government ban on Hamas activity in Jordan.
A Jordanian of Palestinian origin, he was banished to Qatar in November 1999 together with three other Hamas activists, including Meshaal.
Hamas is centered in the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip, but it once had a political office in Amman under the unspoken approval of the late King Hussein. Meshaal, a one-time Jordanian Hamas leader, owed his life to an intervention by Hussein after an Israeli assassination attempt, according to the Washington Post.
Many saw the 1999 crackdown on Hamas as an attempt by Hussein's son and successor, King Abdullah, to curry favor with the U.S., Israel, and the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), which at the time had arrested Hamas members, the Post said.
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