By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

It is really hard to think of a single convincing or legitimate reason for the flagrant abduction of Professor Aziz Dweik by Gestapo-like Israeli troops earlier this week.

The 63-year-old Palestinian leader was returning home in Hebron from Ramallah when soldiers manning a roadblock snatched him rather unceremoniously from his car. They handcuffed him as if he were a common criminal.

Dweik is the elected speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council. He was elected in 2006 in free elections, monitored by many American and European observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who testified to their transparency.

Dweik has a long experience of being arrested, mistreated and imprisoned by the Israeli apartheid authorities without charge or trial.

In 1991, he was amongst more than 300 Palestinian Islamic activists deported to Marj al-Zuhur in Southern Lebanon by then Israeli prime minister Isaac Rabin.

In 2008, Dweik was imprisoned for more than two years in connection with the political wing of the Islamic Liberation Movement, Hamas.

And, now, he is being rearrested for no real reason, other than stratifying the sadistic urge of the Jewish-Zionist love to watch Palestinians suffer.

It is very much like the Nazis who persecuted Jews during the course of World War II because they were Jews.

From the outward, at least, Israeli Nazism and Arian Nazism seem like tweedledum and tweedledee.

But then there is no doubt that Israel has many reasons to see people like Dweik tormented and agonizing. This is the way many Zionists justify themselves. Zionists don't feel satisfied unless they see themselves as masters, oppressors, tormentors and persecutors.

They want to show the Palestinians that the Jews are still the masters!!! The collective psychosis plaguing the Israeli Jewish mindset has many manifestations. Undoubtedly, rounding up Palestinians, especially Palestinian leaders, is one of these expressions of Israel's collective mental morbidity.

With a Ph.D. in urban planning from a prestigious American university, Dweik would have preferred a career in urban development. However, the enduring and unrelenting oppression meted out to his people by the Zionist apartheid regime, forced him to enter politics in the hope of setting his people free.

Dweik never hurled stones at anyone. He never indulged in violence, verbal or physical. Yet the Israeli regime, which classified Palestinians into either terrorists who ought to be annihilated or collaborators who are entitled to no respect, couldn't bear seeing the Geography professor speak up against the Israeli occupation, apartheid and oppression.

It is possible that the Netanyahu regime wants to thwart Palestinian national reconciliation as professor Dweik stood at the forefront of those pushing for ending the rift between Hamas and Fatah.

In a certain sense, the arrest of Dweik comes within the normal order of things. It reminds Palestinians and others of the evil nature of the Israeli occupation, and that this evil occupation will continue to be a sword drawn against Palestinian throats until it has disappeared once and for all.

The Israeli occupation, at least as far we Palestinians are concerned, is very much like a cancer. It is either you eradicate it or it will eradicate you.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has denounced the abduction of Prof. Dweik. However, a stronger condemnation of the blatant terrorist act would have been more appropriate. After all, the PA leadership is supposed to be the leadership of the Palestinian people and what can be accepted from a distant state may not be accepted by the Ramallah regime.

The PA should have threatened the Zionist Reich with stopping the scandalous security coordination or perhaps warning the Zionist leadership that no bilateral meetings in Amman would take place unless Dweik was released.

Indeed, silence or weak reactions to Zionist provocations do embolden the Zionists and make them view everything Palestinian as expendable, insignificant and worthless. The Zionists have been running roughshod over us for too long. It is time to make them stop it.

It is not too late for the PA to issue a stern warning to the Zionist regime. Dawdling and slack reactions won't take us anywhere.

The very existence of the PA is a definitive Israeli interest. Hence, the PA is not without bargaining chips vis-à-vis the Nazi-like entity. But the PA does lack the will and perhaps the national dignity to behave the way it should.

Moreover, the arrest of Prof. Dweik is likely to be a message of defiance and provocation to the Islamists in the region, from Tunis to Amman.

Hence, the people of Palestine expect Muslim leaders to leave no stone unturned until the apartheid regime frees Dweik from captivity.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan are also called upon to demonstrate against the Zionist regime, protesting the flagrant arrest and urging the masses against any normalization with the Zionist entity.

We are each other's keepers, and if we don't act against the common enemy, then foreign nations and foreign powers won't take us seriously.

On this occasion, I would like to strongly urge the two main Islamist parties in Egypt, the Nur and Freedom and Justice parties, to adopt an uncompromising and forceful stance vis-à-vis Israel .

We also hope that the new rulers in Cairo will link any level of commitment to the hapless peace treaty with Israel to Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians.

I am sure a step in this direction would alleviate much of the Zionist pressure on the Palestinian people.

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By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine. Source: The Palestinian Information Center http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s78SSqjkKMasFuJe5VyP9V6Y%2f%2b0JSso1d9%2bCpjhUa8%2bg8xXCU1QXpxwz6FJngMzPLEHeSr4Mrx8B2TOH2BMig%2bQ84DoRuR20XnAXWBJO4WBtw%3d