Ramallah – Ma’an – Recently released from an Israeli jail, the speaker of Palestine's parliament said Thursday he will resume work at the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in Ramallah next Wednesday.

The Hamas-affiliated official, Aziz Dweik, added in a statement that "this move comes in an effort to activate the role of the PLC and to prevent the [Israeli] occupation from interfering in or obstructing the Palestinians' pioneering and democratic experience."

"After I was released from Israel's jail, and after holding a meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas, I decided to begin work in the PLC," he said, adding that the PLC intends to unify the Palestinian people and government, which was fractured in 2007 after brief but violent clashes that led to Hamas seizing control of Gaza and the Fatah-backed Palestinian Authority with the West Bank.

Dweik was released from Israeli custody following just under three years in prison, although he was never convicted of any crime other than being a member of Hamas, the party that he represents in parliament. Hamas won PLC elections in January 2006. Months after the movement came to power in the Palestinian parliamentary elections, Israel seized a number of Hamas-affiliated lawmakers as "bargaining chips" following the capture of one of its soldiers near the Gaza Strip in 2006.

Dweik is a professor at An-Najah National University in the West Bank city of Nablus. He holds a PhD in Regional and Architecture Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, which is in the United States.