MIDEAST-PALESTINIAN-WEST BANK-HAMAS-POLITICS

Hamas Palestinian parliament speaker Aziz Dweik, released from an Israeli prison on June 23, gives a press conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on June 28, 2009. Dweik was elected speaker in February 2006, a month after the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) swept Palestinian parliamentary elections in a surprise rout of the long dominant Fatah party of president Mahmud Abbas. He was arrested by Israeli security forces at his Ramallah home in August 2006 in a West Bank crackdown on Hamas in which more than 60 elected officials were detained, including a third of the then government and more than two dozen MPs. AFP PHOTO/ABBAS MOMANI (Photo by ABBAS MOMANI / AFP) (Photo by ABBAS MOMANI/AFP via Getty Images)