The polls had barely closed before friends of the henna-bearded Muhammad Abu Tir, 55, began talking him up to be the Palestinian Authority's next Interior minister. "I think I'd be good at it," he told NEWSWEEK at his East Jerusalem home. "I'm qualified." Abu Tir—the victorious Hamas's second-ranked candidate in last week's parliamentary elections and a onetime leader in the militant Islamist group's armed wing-has plenty of firsthand experience with law enforcement. He's spent most of his adult life in Israeli prisons. But on further reflection, he said he might do better to keep "a low profile" in the new government. The more he thought about it, the less he seemed to like the idea of Hamas's putting anyone in jail. At last he declared flatly: "We will not act as policemen."
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