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KETZIOT, Israel: Israel began freeing more than 250
Palestinian prisoners early Friday, making good on a pledge to
president Mahmud Abbas after the takeover of the Gaza Strip by
radical Hamas.
The first armored buses filled
with detainees in handcuffs pulled out of the Ketziot prison in
southern Israel just before 0400 GMT.
“We have begun to free 256
prisoners, including six women,” Ian Domnitz, a spokesman for the
prisons authority, told AFP on the scene as the buses pulled out
under heavy guard.
Getting onto the buses, men with
fresh haircuts and carrying plastic bags with their belongings,
flashed victory signs to the gathered journalists.
“We are very happy to be freed
today,” one man told AFP before boarding an armored bus, its
windows replaced by metal sheets, one of six that pulled out of
Ketziot jail carrying prisoners.
Friday’s prisoner release is
the biggest by Israel since 2005, when 500 Palestinians were freed
in February and another 400 in June.
All the prisoners were to be
transferred to the Beitunya checkpoint with the occupied West Bank,
from where they were to travel to Ramallah to be greeted as heroes
by Abbas and expected hundreds of well wishers.
The six women prisoners were
being transferred to Beitunya from the Hasharon prison in Tel Aviv.
Israel agreed to release the 256
as part of a series of goodwill gestures designed to bolster Abbas
in his struggle for power with the Islamist Hamas, following the
group’s bloody takeover of the Gaza Strip.
The prisoners include 11 minors
and for the most part belong to Abbas’s pragmatic Fatah party that
has been locked in a power struggle with Hamas since losing a
general election to the Islamist movement in 2006.
None of them have “blood on
their hands,” meaning involvement in attacks that have killed
Israelis, and all had to sign a “commitment not to be involved in
terror” prior to their release.
The most high-profile prisoner
being freed is Abdelrahim Malluh, the 60-year-old deputy leader of
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). He was
arrested in 2002 and sentenced two years later to nine years in jail
for belonging to a terror group.
The prisoner serving the longest
sentence is Muhannad Jaradat, detained in 1989 and sentenced to 20
years. His sentence was due to end in September 2009.
While welcoming the release, the
Palestinians have said that freeing 250 prisoners out of the more
than 11,000 held in Israeli jails, the majority of them on security
charges were not enough.
Other recent Israeli gestures to
Abbas have included a pledge to remove from wanted lists nearly 190
militants who had promised not to carry out attacks against Israel,
and releasing a part of Palestinian customs duties it has withheld
for more than a year after Hamas came to power.
Since Hamas routed forces loyal
to Abbas in Gaza on June 15 in ferocious street battles, the
Palestinians have been split into two entities, with the moderate
president controlling the West Bank and Hamas ruling over Gaza.
--AFP
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