Jerusalem - Israel's cabinet voted Sunday to approve the
release of some 200 Palestinians from its jails, in a move a
government spokesman described as 'a confidence-building measure to
strengthen the peace process and dialogue.'
The release, Mark Regev said, was intended 'to demonstrate that
the path of moderation, negotiation and reconciliation would bring
tangible results.'
He said the release would include prisoners with 'blood on their
hands' - Israeli terminology for prisoners who carried out attacks in
which people were killed.
When they met on August 6, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
promised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to free more prisoners,
as a 'goodwill gesture and a confidence-building measure.'
The fate of the approximately 8,500 Palestinians in Israeli jails
is a highly emotional one for the Palestinians.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has 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.
Negotiations for the release of an Israeli soldier, kidnapped by
Gaza-based militias on June 25, 2006, and still held in the Gaza
Strip, have so far come to naught, with Israel refusing to release
the 1,000 prisoners demands.
But on July 16, after weeks of negotiations, Israel freed five
Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Kuntar, jailed in 1979 for
leading an attack in which four Israelis were killed, in exchange for
the bodies of two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah snatched in a cross-
border raid on July 12, 2006.
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