If the gunmen who shot reformist Palestinian legislator Nabil Amr through the window of his house in July hoped to silence him, they are being disappointed. Mr. Amr, a vocal critic of the late Yasser Arafat’s monopoly on power, was warmly welcomed back to his village of Dura over the weekend after four months of treatment in a German hospital. He immediately lashed out at the Palestinian Authority’s failure to arrest anyone in the shooting, and more generally, the absence of daily security for Palestinian citizens.” I feel I am back to life again,” says Amr, a former minister of information. “I’m back from the mouth of death to another stage in my life and I will continue my message and my position and my direction.” He defines this as pushing for democracy, building viable institutions, and restructuring the unwieldy and often competing labyrinth of Palestinian security forces into one streamlined organization. Amr’s shooting led to the amputation of part of his right leg, rendering him a visual symbol of the lawlessness and intra-Palestinian violence that plagues the occupied territories. So this close ally of Mahmoud Abbas, the leading candidate to succeed Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), limped on an artificial limb among well-wishers who greeted the tall, stylish politician with kisses on the cheek. Full Story
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