LOC13:32
10:32 GMT
GAZA, Jan 21 (KUNA) -- French Minister of Foreign and European Affairs
Michele Alliot-Marie was received at Beit Hanon crossing northern Gaza on
Friday with the throwing of stones and shoes, a Palestinian Military source
said.
Families of Palestinian prisoners gathered at the crossing and started
throwing stones and shoes at the French official's convoy because she called
the kidnapping of Israeli prisoner Jilad Shalit, who held a French passport, a
"war crime."
Palestinians were agitated by the fact that Alliot-Marie who met Shalit's
parents Thursday, has ignored the sufferings of 6,900 Palestinian held at 25
Israeli prisons.
Hamas stated it contempt towards what it called a "double standards policy,
" adopted the French foreign minister.
Hamas official Ismail Ridhwan said that Palestinians were being brutally
abused by Israelis because they were "defending their legal right."
Spokesman of the military wing of the Popular Resistance Committees, Salah
Addin Brigades, Abu Mujahid said that Shalit was held off a tank and that
"Israelis are the war criminals."
Shalit will not be freed until the Palestinian condition is met by Israeli,
and that is the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners with heavy sentences
and those who served for many years at Israeli penitentiaries, he said.
Alliot-Marie, who started a Middle East tour with a visit to Israel and the
Palestinian authority on Wednesday, is scheduled to visit the headquarters of
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA) in Gaza.
She will also visit Jerusalem hospital which was damaged during the Israeli
aggression on the strip, Karm Abu Salem crossing, and the French Cultural
Center in Gaza.
She is scheduled to visit Egypt and Jordan in her tour that ends on Sunday.
(end)
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