JERUSALEM: Israel is set to release 26 Palestinian prisoners in the early hours of today as part of US-brokered peace talks, after a court rejected a last-minute appeal by victims’ families.
The prisoners were expected to be freed just after midnight, in the third stage of the release of 104 inmates that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed to let go when the peace talks were renewed in July.
The move comes a day before US Secretary of State John Kerry is set to return to the region in a bid to boost the faltering negotiations.
As with the two previous releases in August and October, each of 26 prisoners, bereaved Israeli families represented by the Almagor organisation petitioned Israel’s High Court against
the move.
Almagor noted five of the latest 26 to be freed were from annexed east Jerusalem and considered as residents by Israel, but should not be released without the government debating the issue as Netanyahu promised.
But the court rejected the petition, saying the five’s residency did not make the government decision to release them “unreasonable”.
The 26 inmates were jailed before the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, which formally launched the Middle East peace process, and have served 19 to 28 years for killing Israeli civilians or soldiers.
Besides the east Jerusalem residents, 18 of the prisoners are from the occupied West Bank, with another three from Gaza, according to Sivan Weizman, a spokesman for the Israeli prisons service.
Last evening, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a rocket that struck Israel, a police spokesman told AFP, causing no damage. No organisation claimed responsibility.
The Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza objects peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
In the West Bank, families of the prisoners were eagerly waiting at the Ofer military prison from where the prisoners would be set free and taken to the PA headquarters in Ramallah, where they would be received by president Mahmud Abbas.
The Palestinians hailed them as heroes imprisoned for fighting against the Israeli occupation.
Emotions were also high on the Israeli side, where the jailed militants were viewed as murderers.
AFP
