Jerusalem/Ramallah - Israel will release more Palestinian
prisoners at the end of the month, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Wednesday, as the two men met in
Jerusalem to review progress in the ongoing peace talks.
Olmert spokesman Mark Regev, who described the Abbas-Olmert parley
as 'positive and purposeful, said the release was a 'goodwill
gesture and a confidence-building measure'.
He did not say how many prisoners would be freed, or whether the
list would include Marwan Barghouti, the jailed West Bank leader of
Abbas' Fatah movement, or Ahmed Sadat, the head of the Popular Friont
for the Liberation of Palestine.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat Wednesday said Olmert had
agreed to free up to 150 Palestinian prisoners. Their release from
Israeli prisons would take place by the end of August, Erekat said.
Abbas has reportedly demanded their release, as a way of building
his standing in the eyes of his electorate, and showing that he can
get prisoners freed through negotiations, rather than through
kidnapping Israelis to use as bargaining chips, the tactic favoured
by such militants groups as Hamas and the Iranian-backed Lebanese
Hezbollah.
Olmert and Abbas also expressed a willingness to continue with the
peace process, Regev said, and the two leaders said they would would
do 'what needs to be done in order to make progress.'
The meeting was also attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi
Livni and former Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia, who
respectively head the Israel and Palestinian teams negotiating a
peace deal.
Olmert and Abbas pledged at the Annapolis summit in November last
year to try and reach a peace deal by the end of 2008. Peace talks
resumed, after a seven-year hiatus, at the turn of the year, but the
negotiations are being held amidst a virtual media blackout and with
conflicting reports as to the progress being made.
However, the 2008 deadline has been complicated by Olmert's
announcement last week that he will resign the premiership after his
Kadima party elects a new leader in September.
He said that as long as he remained prime minister he would 'not
desist from the effort to bring the negotiations between us and our
neighbours to a successful conclusion that offers hope,' and added
that 'we are closer than ever to firm understandings that can serve
as the basis for agreements.'
But analysts doubt whether Olmert, effectively a lame-duck prime
minister from the moment of his announcement last Wednesday night,
can win political backing in Israel for any agreement he may achieve.
Livni is the front-runner to succeed Olmert as leader of Kadima
and, if she can form a government, as prime minister.
The other leading candidate is Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz, a
hawk who has expressed scepticism about the chances of reaching a
peace deal with the Palestinian administration currently split
between Abbas' Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Islamic
Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas, which rejects Israel's right to exist and does not accept
the 1993-94 Oslo interim peace accords, on Wednesday slammed the
regular Olmert-Abbas parleys as 'a sort of comedy.'
'Abbas goes to hand out information in the frame of security
liaison between the two sides or to receive new orders from Olmert to
apply them on the ground,' spokesman Fawzi Barhooom said in Gaza.
Hamas has previously slammed Abbas for his cooperation with
Israel, accusing him of being an agent for the Jewish state and for
the United States.
Hamas and Fatah have been at loggerheads ever since the former
defeated the latter in the January 2006 Palestinian elections.
Tensions were exacerbated after Hamas gunmen routed forces loyal to
Abbas in the Gaza Strip in June 2007 and seized security control of
the salient.
Relations between the sides deteriorated even further after Hamas
blamed Fatah for a car bomb in Gaza last month which killed five
Hamas members and a small girl.
Hamas arrested Fatah activists in the Strip, and the PA police
began rounding up Hamas members in the West Bank.
In a separate development, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak
ordered Wednesday the demolition of the home of an East Jerusalem
Palestinian who shot up a Jewish religious seminary in the western
part of the city in March this year, killing eight students.
Israeli media reported that Barak made the decision on the
recommendation of the Home Front Command, the police and the Shin Bet
internal security service.
However, the family of Ala Abu Dhaim, who was shot dead in the
March attack, will be able to appeal to the High Court against
Barak's decision.
The debate over whether to demolish the home, in the East
Jerusalem suburb of Jabel Mukaber, has been going on ever since the
attack on March 6.
It was given further impetus after Israel contemplated demolishing
the house of another East Jerusalem Palestinian who ran amok with a
bulldozer in a West Jerusalem street on July 3 and killed 3 people.
Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz said there was no legal prohibition
against the demolitions in areas under Israeli sovereignty, although
he added that such a move would give rise to both international and
local obstacles.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war, and
annexed it shortly afterward. The annexation has not been recognised
internationally.
USA
Your Talkback on this Story