OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 7 July 2003 — The Israeli government yesterday paved the way for the release of some 350 Palestinian prisoners in a move designed to bolster the fledgling peace process but which fell short of Palestinian demands.
Earlier, the Israeli Cabinet set tough terms for the release. “There is no way prisoners with blood on their hands will be released,” Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his Cabinet as he read from a list of terms it approved by a vote of 13-8, a senior government official said. Under the criteria, Palestinians jailed for sending others to attack Israelis and members of militant groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad will remain locked up, the official said.
But the Cabinet later agreed by 13 votes to eight a motion authorizing the releases on the basis of a list drawn up the Shin Beth security service, a government source said. And the list was drawn up at the request of Sharon, keen to make a goodwill gesture to his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas who made the releases a key demand at their joint meeting last Tuesday. The Cabinet laid down precise criteria which must be met for prisoners to be released and insisted that a final decision on their freedom would be made by an inter-ministerial commission.
According to military radio, the Shin Beth list is made up of 350 names, which represents a little more than five percent of the total number of detainees. Some 215 are classified as administrative detainees who have been kept in custody without trial for renewable periods of three to six months on the orders of the military. The remaining 135 are currently serving prison sentences but have not been convicted of taking part in attacks which led to casualties, according to military radio.
Palestinian security chief Mohammad Dahlan later told Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz that the move was a positive first step but reiterated demands for all prisoners to be set free when the pair met in Jerusalem, a Palestinian security source said. “We told him that this is a good first step but not enough. We told him that this is very important for the people to support the peace process and Abu Mazen”, the nom-de-guerre of Abbas who is spearheading the Palestinian negotiations with the Israelis.
Initial reaction from radical Palestinian groups, which recently announced a truce conditional on the release of all prisoners, was largely negative. A senior official for Hamas said the move was “insufficient” while Islamic Jihad said the Israelis were giving false hope to families of detainees.
“We demand the liberation of all the detainees and in particular those from Hamas and we are not prepared to accept discrimination in this regard,” Hamas official Ismail Hanyeh told reporters. But he said that the move represented a “first step” while reiterating that that the release of “all those in detention” remained a condition of the ceasefire agreed last weekend.
A senior official from Islamic Jihad, another signatory to the truce, criticized the “Zionist maneuver” and accused the Israeli government of “playing with the hopes of families”.
