Israeli prosecutors failed to persuade a military court on Wednesday to extend the prison term of the Hamas speaker of the Palestinian parliament, who is due to go free in two months.
Israel detained Aziz Dweik and dozens of other Hamas politicians in the occupied West Bank in 2006 after gunmen from the Palestinian Islamist group abducted an Israeli soldier on the Gaza Strip border.
The dragnet paralyzed the Palestinian Legislative Council, which had been dominated by Hamas since it crushed President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed, secular Fatah faction in a parliamentary election earlier that year.
The Islamists accused Israel of trying to pressure them into freeing the soldier, Gilad Shalit, who remains in captivity.
Dweik, 60, has been touted by Hamas a possible contender for the presidency, though Western mediators have ruled out dealing with a Hamas political leadership that does not recognize the Jewish state.
An Israeli military spokesman said that Dweik, who was sentenced to three years in prison for his ties to Hamas, would go free when the term was up, as a bid by prosecutors to keep him behind bars was rejected.
Dweik's lawyer Osama al-Saadi said his client was due to be released on August 6.
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