ISRAEL / GAZA: Palestinian prisoners, released by Israel return to the Gaza strip and the West Bank

Record ID: 396608

  • Title: ISRAEL / GAZA: Palestinian prisoners, released by Israel return to the Gaza strip and the West Bank
  • Date: 4th December 2007
  • Summary: MORE OF ALAA NAMLA KISSING RELATIVES
  • Embargoed: 19th December 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVABFOCFDEVCAB922DTMLHF2WER8
  • Story Text: Weeping with joy, Amneh Namla greeted her son Alaa on Monday (December 3) after he was released from an Israeli prison along with some 429 others.

    "The happiness is not complete, only when the last prisoner in the occupation prisons is freed my happiness will be complete. And I have another son who is imprisoned for life, he has been in for 17 years now; his brother (Alaa's) from his father in Nafha prison. I ask God to release all prisoners like my son and come out safe and sound ," Namla said.
    Israel released prisoners in a bid to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas against Hamas Islamists, after a U.S.-sponsored conference last week on Palestinian statehood, Israeli officials said.
    The prisoners, most of whom belong to Abbas's secular Fatah movement, were bussed from the desert prison of Kitsiyot to Israel's borders with the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
    They were among nearly 11,000 Palestinians being held in Israeli jails.
    Many of those who went free voiced concern for comrades still behind bars.
    Israel's Prisons Service said 20 prisoners were sent to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and 409 to a crossing near the West Bank city of Ramallah, where a formal homecoming reception took place, attended by Palestinian Authority officials and families.
    Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert launched formal peace talks at the conference in Annapolis, Maryland in an attempt to reach a peace agreement by the end of 2008, just as U.S. President George W. Bush comes to the end of his term in office.
    Hamas has rejected the peace moves with Israel.
    The issue of prisoners is highly emotive for Palestinians, who consider the detainees as fighters against Israeli occupation. Many Israelis fear that such amnesties encourage Palestinian militants to strike again.
    Israel has regularly conducted arrest raids in the West Bank and Gaza since a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000. Forty-two suspected militants were taken into custody on Monday, the Israeli army said.
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