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July 19, 2012

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Israel on Thursday released parliament speaker Aziz Dweik along with administrative detainee Jaafar Izz Ad-Din, who spent 56 days on hunger strike, officials said.

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July 16, 2012
RAMALLAH (Ma’an) -- Israeli authorities are set to release the Palestinian parliamentary speaker from jail on Thursday, after detaining him for six months under administrative detention.

Aziz Dweik said via his lawyer that Israeli authorities informed him they would not renew his administrative detention.

Dweik, who heads the Palestinian Legislative Council, was arrested at a Ramallah checkpoint in January. An Israeli military court ordered his detention without charge for six months.

The PLC speaker's office had denounced the order as an "abusive decision without any charge or legal justification."

The Palestinian parliament has been inactive since Hamas ousted Fatah from the Gaza Strip in 2007, a year after Hamas won parliamentary elections. The parties signed a reconciliation agreement in May 2011 but it has yet to be implemented.

Since Dweik's detention, three other MPs and a former minister, all members of the Hamas-affiliated Change and Reform Bloc, have been seized by Israeli forces.

There are currently 26 PLC members in Israeli jails, 22 of them in administrative detention without charge or trial, according to prisoners rights group Addameer.
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