RAMALLAH, West Bank, 17 August 2003 — Israel’s refusal to free more than a handful of Palestinian prisoners is like “an open wound” in the peace process which, if not treated, will have serious consequences, Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan told reporters yesterday.
Speaking after a meeting with Hisham Abdelrazek, minister for prisoner affairs and a number of prisoners’ families, Dahlan said Israel should learn from the experience of Northern Ireland about the importance of prisoner releases.
He was referring to the hundreds of both Protestant and Catholic prisoners, many of them jailed for security offenses, who were granted clemency under terms of the April 1998 Good Friday peace accords.
“If Israel doesn’t release the prisoners, it will lead to more complications in the peace process and will increase incitement among the Palestinian people,” Dahlan warned.
Israel’s refusal to release more than several hundred out of an estimated 6,000 Palestinian prisoners has proved a stumbling block in the way of advancing the US-backed peace road map.
Palestinian militant groups have conditioned a three-month suspension of anti-Israeli attacks they declared on June 29 on the unconditional release of all the prisoners.
Commenting on Israel’s decision to pull out of four West Bank cities over the next two weeks, Dahlan said he would “observe what happens on the ground because the honesty of this agreement lies in how it is implemented.”
Dahlan yesterday stressed the importance of removing army checkpoints from the West Bank.
“Any withdrawal must also involve lifting checkpoints from around the cities to guarantee free movement for all the people,” he said.
For his part, Palestinian MP Qadura Fares said that Dahlan had reached an agreement with Israel over a second thorny issue: how to deal with the Palestinians wanted by Israel, including those taking refugee in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters.
“There is an agreement,” he said, but refused to give details.
Army radio reported late Friday that Dahlan had agreed to set up a mechanism for dealing with the wanted Palestinians, but there was no immediate confirmation of the report.
