Israeli cabinet votes to free 250 Palestinian prisoners (3rd Roundup)

Jul 8, 2007, 20:51 GMT

Jerusalem - 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.

Late Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met in Jerusalem with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyed, head of Abbas' emergency government. This was the first meeting between the two since the moderate Fayyad was appointed prime minister following the Hamas takeover of Gaza last month.

Fayyad asked Livni to work to improve the Palestinians' situation and increase freedom of movement, local media reported. The two also discussed ways to advance the peace process by involving more Arab states.

An Israeli government spokesperson said that representatives of the Arab League, from Jordan and Egypt, are expected to arrive soon in Israel to discuss the Arab peace initiative, relaunched in March at the last Arab summit.

The move calls for complete Arab recognition of Israel in return for a withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, and a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.

This would be the first official Arab League visit to the Jewish state.

The actual list of prisoners to be released following the government decision will be brought to a cabinet committee for approval at a later date, but reports Sunday in Israel said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had vetoed the first selections presented to him by the Shin Bet internal security organization.

The Shin Bet list apparently included prisoners who were nearing release. Olmert, reports said, thought this would not be an appropriate gesture and demanded that prisoners whose release dates were further in the future be considered.

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.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri slammed the decision, saying it would 'divide' the Palestinians because the Israelis were only releasing prisoners from 'certain groups,' a reference to Fatah.

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.

The cabinet vote follows a pledge by Olmert two weeks ago at a four-way Israeli-Palestinian-Egyptian-Jordanian summit, where he said he would free the prisoners in order to strengthen Abbas, who is locked in political battle with the Hamas movement.

Israel has said it would try to boost Abbas' standing with his own electorate, after the president dismissed a Hamas-led government following the Islamic movement's violent takeover last month of the Gaza Strip.

Olmert indicated that Israel would cooperate with the emergency government Abbas formed to replace the Hamas-led cabinet.