THE long-serving Palestinian prisoners whom Israel has pledged to release, and whose pledge prepared the way for the Palestinian leader Abbas to reopen the current peace talks, are to be released in four stages by Israel, PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said Saturday.
In the first stage, 26 prisoners are to be released on August 13, Erekat has said. He added that Israel had refused to release them all on that date and had insisted on a phased withdrawal.
What he didn’t have to say, and what is obvious to all Palestinians, is that the release on the 13th and further releases will depend on whether Israel perceives that the talks are going its way or not – the prisoners are to be held hostage!
This is a two-edged sword, since it will also enable Abbas and Erekat to argue that Palestinian negotiators will have to tread very carefully to ensure that the long-term prisoners are freed.
The prisoner release was approved by Israel’s cabinet last week and will see 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners freed.
The next round of direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks will take place in the region during the second week of August, Israel’s negotiator Tzipi Livni said on Saturday.
Last Wednesday, Livni said she was ‘encouraged’ by the first round of direct peace talks. However, all of the major Palestinian political factions, with the exception of Fatah, have rallied against a return to negotiations.
The last direct talks between the two parties collapsed in September 2010 amid continued illegal Israeli settlement building. The Israeli state has not only kept to this position, it has built on it, enraging the Palestinians.
On Saturday, a Palestinian youth group in Hebron organised a protest vigil to demonstrate against Israel’s Prawer Plan, which will displace tens of thousands of Bedouin residents of the Negev from their land in occupied Palestine.
The youth said: ‘We gathered here today, both local and international activists, to highlight that the Zionist entity is committing premeditated crimes. This is racism, displacement, ethnic cleansing and discrimination against Palestinians.’
Protestors in Hebron chanted slogans denouncing the Prawer Plan and urged Palestinians to close ranks and unite so as to be able to support their compatriots in the Negev to struggle against ‘oppression and discrimination’.
The Prawer-Begin Bill calls for the relocation of 30,000-40,000 Bedouin, the demolition of about 40 villages and the confiscation of more than 700,000 dunums of land in the Negev.
This is happening during the restarted ‘peace process’! At the same time, the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem is continuing in order to build new Israeli settlements.
The absentee properties office in Israel refused last Thursday to freeze the evacuation order of a Palestinian family in East Jerusalem.
Karim Siam, a member of the Siam family who got the evacuation order, said that his lawyer informed him that the absentee properties office refused to freeze the evacuation order. There is no peace for the Palestinians.
Naftali Bennett, the leader of the far-right Jewish Home party and a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet, made this clear in his comment to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot on the Palestinian prisoner release saying: ‘If you catch terrorists, you have to simply kill them.’
He added: ‘I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.’
The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs commented: ‘The Israeli government has to open a transparent and legal investigation into these remarks and allow Palestinian rights advocates to follow the investigation.’ However, there is no point in investigating Zionists for propagating Zionism.
The peace process is a fraud. The Palestinian people must continue with and step up their revolution!
There will be no peace in Palestine until the occupation and all its settlements have been ended, until Jerusalem is its capital, and all Palestinian refugees have the right to return. Then Palestine will be a country in which Arabs, Jews and Christians live side by side in a secular socialist state.