Reuters  --  Arab News

RAMALLAH, West Bank, 10 April 2004 — Palestinian President Yasser Arafat personally intervened yesterday to seek the release of two Palestinians who were abducted by resistance fighters in Iraq and accused of spying for Israel, his office said.

Israel earlier said it could do little to help the two men, residents of Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem. “President Arafat has contacted our brothers in Iraq and other international bodies and friends today to help in releasing the two kidnapped Palestinians, Nabil George Razuq and Ahmed Yassin Tikati, both held in Iraq,” a statement said.

Azzam Al-Ahmad, Palestinian minister of technology and communications, said Arafat instructed the Palestinian Embassy in Baghdad “to make contact with several Iraqi factions in order to solve this problem”. Razuq and Tikati, and a masked man who alleged they were Israeli spies, were shown on Iranian television on Thursday along with Israeli identity cards.

Israel issues the cards to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, captured along with the rest of the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed in a move that is not recognized internationally. An Israeli official denied any government links to Razuq and Tikati. Razzuq’s family also denied he was an Israeli agent and said he had gone to Iraq to help fellow Arabs. Razuq is employed by Research Triangle International, a North Carolina-based, independent non-profit organization that has a major reconstruction contract in Iraq.

Meanwhile, worshipers handed over cash and jewelry to armed and masked men at Gaza mosques yesterday, at the start of a drive by the resistance group Hamas to raise money for its armed wing amid US pressure to choke off its funds.

The collectors passed around charity boxes, netting about $120,000 in the first hours of the campaign for Hamas’ Ezzedine El-Qassam armed wing, responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings. “Now you can help buy ammunition for the fighters,” said a Hamas statement distributed at the mosques.

Some women took off necklaces, rings and earrings and placed them in the charity boxes. Hamas is popular in Gaza where it runs a network of charities. The fund-raising drive was carried out by its political wing, which normally denies any link to militant attacks, as well as its armed wing. Saeed Seyam, a senior Hamas leader, said the amount of money raised so far indicated enormous support for Hamas.