Muslims across state, U.S. plan to stage rallies today
 BY NICK G. MAHERAS
 ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
  GUILFORD COUNTY – Muslims across the country are planning rallies today to protest the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip – but not in High Point or Greensboro.
  “It won’t happen in Greens*boro,” said Wajeh Muhammad, a member of the board of trustees of the Islamic Center of the Triad, one of Greens*boro’s largest mosques.
  “There’s no sense in it. What are we going to accomplish?” Muhammad, a native Palestini*an, disagrees with more mili*tant Palestinians that they must in*sist on a prisoner exchange so Israel can get a kidnapped soldier back.
  Hamas militants burrowed through a tunnel June 25 and came up at an Israeli guard post, killing two soldiers and taking Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, hostage.
  Israel has since launched a restrained invasion of the Gaza Strip, from which it withdrew nearly a year ago, demanded the return of Shalit and cut power and water service to more than 1 million Palestini*ans in Gaza.
  “Our position still stands,” Muhammad said. “We should re*lease the soldier, because of all the misery and suffering that this is bringing to our people.
  “Release the soldier, and we can free our prisoners some other way.” Hamas, classified as a terror*ist group by the U.S. govern*ment, has offered to swap Shalit for hundreds of Pales*tinian prisoners held by Israel, but Israel has refused.
  “For the last two weeks, Is*rael has been engaged in a hor*rendous act of collective pun*ishment against the entire 1.3 million Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Hamdy Radwan, a Raleigh member of the Muslim American Society. A protest against Israel will be staged in front of the state Capitol in Raleigh this afternoon and by hundreds of groups around the United States and the world, ac*cording to Radwan.
  “There is more suffering on our part than the Israelis,” Muhammad said. “That’s one family (the Israeli soldier’s) compared to a million families suffering in Gaza.”
 nmaheras@hpe.com |888-3534

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