Sheikh Tallal Sidr founded the Hebron chapter of Hamas and in their early years was one of the five highest Hamas leaders in the West Bank. This all changed, however, when he was deported to Southern Lebanon in 1991 along with hundreds of others the Israeli government deemed to be "militants." It was in exile that Sidr realized nonviolence was the way towards "Allah's justice," for "the path of killing [here] has no end". A member of the Jerusalem Peacemakers and one of the main speakers at the January 2005 Annual Conference of Imams and Rabbis, Sidr is one of the signatories of the historic Alexandria Declaration of January 2002.