Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Palestinian prisoners 'moved' before Israel release

BBC News online -- 13 August 2013

John Kerry stressed that Washington considered settlements "illegitimate"

Twenty-six Palestinian prisoners set for release in the early hours of Wednesday have been moved to a jail in central Israel, reports say.

Direct peace talks are due to resume in Jerusalem hours after they are taken to crossings in Gaza and the West Bank.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged Palestinians "not to react adversely" to an Israeli announcement approving 1,200 settlement homes.
The measure was "to some degree expected", he said.

Palestinian negotiators have accused Israel's government of trying to sabotage the talks, by deciding to issue tenders for building homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Analysis

Kevin Connolly BBC News, Jerusalem
It ought to feel like a moment of optimism in the long and tortured history of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but somehow it does not.
It is almost exactly 20 years since the then US President Bill Clinton brought the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin together with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to sign an agreement based on extraordinary secret negotiations in the Norwegian capital Oslo.
The truth is that today's negotiators are taking a few steps down a road along which their predecessors travelled rather further.
Back then, the prisoner releases were larger too.
In the heady days of the mid-1990s Israel released, in stages, 4,000 Palestinian prisoners.
This time around it proposes to release 104 over a nine-month period with the first 26 set free in the middle of this week.

Israel has rejected criticism, saying every peace initiative so far has proposed that the settlements affected become Israeli territory.

Mr Kerry, on a visit to Colombia, stressed that Washington considered settlements "illegitimate" but added that the issue "underscores the importance of getting to the table quickly".

The 26 long-term prisoners set for release are the first of 104 Palestinian and Israeli Arab inmates to be freed over the next few months as part of the agreement to restart US-brokered direct peace talks after a three-year hiatus.

According to Israeli media, they were taken to Ayalon prison in Ramle overnight ahead of medical checks and a meeting with International Red Cross representatives on Tuesday morning.

The inmates, all convicted of attacks carried out before 1993, were named by Israel's prisons service shortly after midnight on Sunday, giving victims' families 48 hours to submit legal challenges to the High Court.

On Tuesday, the court rejected an appeal by Israeli victims' rights group Almagor, which objected to the release of prisoners.

Almagor's lawyer Naftali Wertzberger said Wednesday's scheduled release was unprecedented because it involved prisoners "with blood on their hands".

Some time after midnight on Tuesday, 14 of the prisoners are expected to be driven to the Erez border crossing into the Gaza Strip and the remaining 12 to the Betunia checkpoint near Ramallah in the West Bank.

Mother of Salah al-Shaer, one of 26 prisoners set for release on 14 August, in Khan Younis, Gaza (August 12 2013)

Fourteen of the prisoners are due to be released at the Erez crossing in the Gaza Strip

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is said to have told officials to prepare receptions for the prisoners arriving in the West Bank.

In a separate development, Israeli police said a missile fired towards the Red Sea resort of Eilat had been successfully intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system.

Residents had reported hearing a loud explosion and a siren. Analysts said it was the first time Iron Dome had intercepted a rocket fired at Eilat.

An Egyptian al-Qaeda-linked group, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, said it was behind the attack.

Asked about the implications of the Israel's decision on Sunday to issue tenders for 793 housing units in East Jerusalem and 394 in the West Bank, Mr Kerry said he did not expect the announcement to become a "speed bump" that would derail talks.

A preparatory round in Washington a fortnight ago is due to be followed on Wednesday by a direct round of negotiations in Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, it emerged that the municipality of Jerusalem had approved some 900 homes close to the Jewish settlement of Gilo in east Jerusalem. A city councillor was quoted as saying that construction would not begin for years.

A construction site in the Jewish settlement of Gilo in East Jerusalem

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat warned that settlement announcements destroyed the two-state solution

Mr Kerry told reporters the US "views all of the settlements as illegitimate" and had "communicated that policy very clearly to Israel".

However, the question of settlements was "best resolved by solving the problems of security and borders," he said.

Mr Kerry added he had spoken to Israel's chief negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is recovering from hernia surgery.

About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev told the BBC: "The construction decided upon in Jerusalem and in the settlement blocs is in areas that will remain part of Israel in any possible peace agreement," he told the BBC.

The Palestinians have previously agreed in principle to minor land swaps.
But senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said the Israeli government's steps were "simply destroying the two states solution".