Israel to free 250 Palestinian prisoners
Israel’s cabinet voted Sunday to release 250 Palestinian prisoners from President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization, as a goodwill gesture to the Palestinian leader who is locked in political battle with the rival Hamas movement.
In accordance with Israeli policy, the final list will not include ‘prisoners with blood on their hands’ - Israel parlance for prisoners jailed after killing Israelis.
A government communique said only prisoners who served more than two-thirds of their sentence would be released, and provisions would be made for humanitarian cases.
Riad Maliki, minister of information in Abbas’s emergency government in Ramallah, welcomed the move.
‘Despite the fact that we didn’t have a role to play in determining the list of the people to be released, we believe any prisoner freed from Israeli prison is an achievement,’ he said.
Maliki said that ‘this is not enough,’ noting that more than 10,000 Palestinians remained imprisoned in Israel.
Six Israeli ministers voted against the release, which would be the first since February 2005, when 500 prisoners were freed just after Abbas was elected president.
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