[wvns] 980 Palestinians to be released?

Israel: 980 Palestinians slated for release
29/11/2009 http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=243177

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Israel will release 980 Palestinians in exchange for a soldier captured in 2006, its State Attorney's Office said Sunday.

The office said Hamas will select 450 names and Israel will choose the rest.

The announcement came after an activist group petitioned the country's Supreme Court against a swap deal, according to the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

In response, the State Attorney's Office disclosed, "As part of an agreement with Hamas, which would allow the return of soldier Gilad Shalit to Israel ... there is a possibility for the release in principle of about 450 prisoners whose names are being delivered by Hamas."

Some 530 Palestinians selected by Israel will also be released "[a]s a gesture to the Palestinian people" in a second stage of the deal, the office added. "The list of these prisoners has not been formed yet and no criteria have been set on this matter."

The office stressed that "contrary to the release of prisoners as part of a gesture and/or diplomatic agreement, this is an incident of bargaining, which can be seen as an ongoing terror attack, as part of which negotiations are being held to reach the lowest price possible as far as the State of Israel is concerned."

Also on Sunday, an informed Palestinian source told Al-Jazeera that a German mediator will meet Hamas leaders to receive the Islamic movement's final response to Israel's offer. The source said negotiations will be completed in Gaza, and that Hamas wants to clarify certain safeguards required to complete the deal.

Responding to reports by Israeli analysts on Sunday evening the deal was weeks away, Al-Jazeera's source denied that negotiations with Israel had reached an impasse.

According to the source, the chief obstacle has become the United States, which believes the deal would strengthen Hamas and consequently weaken the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. The US is demanding that it be put off or altered because it inordinately favors Hamas, the source said.

Meanwhile, the London-based Guardian newspaper's Sunday edition, The Observer, reported that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has recommended that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti not be freed in the deal.

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Families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli Jails:
"Our Sons are not terrorists, the real terrorists are the Zionist child-killers"

From Khalid Amayreh in al-Khalil
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/news/middle-east/307-families-of-palestinian-prisoners-in-israeli-jails

Abu Yasser is an elderly Palestinian farmer living in the southern part of the West Bank. He keeps his eyes glued to Al-Jazeera Television channel these days to follow up the latest news regarding the German-mediated talks between Israel and Hamas over a possible prisoner-exchange deal.

He hopes that his son, Ahmed, will be amongst hundreds of Palestinian political and resistance activists Israel will set free if a deal is concluded.

The looming deal would see the release of an Israeli soldier, captured by Islamic freedom fighters in Gaza more than three years ago in exchange for the release from Israeli jails and detention camps of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them spending heavy lengthy sentences for resisting the Israeli occupation.

This week, the talks reached a decisive phase as officials from both sides admitted that a tangible progress was being made and that an accord was closer than ever.

These statements raised hopes that some of the Palestinian prisoners who have spent the prime of their lives in Israeli dungeons and detention camps would finally see the light of the day.

"I hope that this time it will be for real," says Abu Yasser, in a tone combining both hope and doubt. "I want to see my son before I die."

"We were repeatedly told that a deal was imminent only to face another disappointment when the talks broke down. But I do hope that this time it is going to be different."

Abu Yasser and his wife, Um Yasser, dismiss Israeli reluctance to free their son and hundreds of other Palestinians imprisoned for their political or military resistance of the Israeli military occupation.

"My son didn't attack civilians like Israeli pilots who rained death on civilians in Gaza. Calling him `terrorist' and similar names is a scandalous abuse of language," says Um Yasser, which means `mother of Yasser.'

"Besides," she adds, all the laws of God and man allow people languishing under a foreign military occupation to resist their tormentors.

"So I want to ask these morally bankrupt politicians and so-called leaders. Would you or wouldn't you resist if your country was invaded and your people repressed and robbed of their rights, honor and dignity by a foreign occupation army?"

Abu Yasser unhesitatingly concurs. However, he argues that the Israelis know deep in their hearts that they are criminals and the Palestinians are victims.

"But you know, Israel is a lawless state, it behaves like a bully."

Snags

While the German mediator Emst Urlau, who is accredited for the reported recent progress, seems determined to conclude a swap deal as soon as possible, Israel is still reluctant to agree to release a few "veteran prisoners" it calls "big heads."

These include resistance leaders such as Ibrahim Hamed and Abdullah al Barghouthi and others involved in carrying out retaliatory attacks against Israel during the Aqsa intifada.

Then the level of Israeli state terror against Palestinian civilians reached scandalous proportions, forcing Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups to carry out counter attacks in order to deter Israel from continuing to murder Palestinian civilians, including children and women.

The Israeli army and Shin Beth, Israel's domestic security agency, made strenuous intelligence efforts to locate the whereabouts of the captured soldier, Shalit, in order to carry out a rescue operation that would liberate him from Hamas's custody.

Indeed, the entire Israeli intelligence apparatus in the Gaza Strip, which includes a large number of informers, was mobilized to a maximal level in the hope of obtaining any piece of information that would have led to finding out the place where Shalit is detained.

In this context, millions of dollars were offered as bounty to anyone providing information that would lead to Shalit's liberation. But all these feats proved futile and unsuccessful.

Eventually, the Israeli government of Ehud Olmert reached the conclusion that even if Shalit's whereabouts were discovered, there was a 99%-probability that any rescue operation would end up having Shalit killed.

The failure to locate the whereabouts of Shalit, let alone rescue him, did make the Israeli bargaining position difficult, especially in the face of mounting pressure from his family to get him back home at any price.

Israel had and still has a standing policy of retrieving soldiers who are captured by the enemy.

However, the protracted imprisonment of Shalit, coupled with Hamas's stubborn refusal to concede on this issue despite the unprecedented ferocity and criminality of Israel's onslaught against Gaza last year seems to have convinced much of the Israeli public, as well as the military establishment, that a deal with Hamas, however bitter and uncomfortable to the Israelis, would be inevitable.

More to the point, Hamas's management of the Shalit issue proved highly successful. Hamas refused from the very inception to act under pressure and paid little attention to the psychological campaign waged by the Israeli media, and also by the Ramallah leadership.

Quite the contrary, Hamas played the psychological pressure card effectively when it released a short video clip showing Shalit in good health. However, the movement utterly refused to allow International Red Cross delegates to visit Shalit, fearing that Israel might take advantage of such a visit in order to implant certain electronic gadgets that would enable the Israeli intelligence to locate Shalit's whereabouts.

One Fatah leader in the Hebron region lauded Hamas's management of the Shalit affair. He argued that "if Shalit had been detained by Fatah, Israel would have known about his whereabouts from day-1."

Winner

There is no doubt that the Islamic liberation group, Hamas, would be the main winner in any prospective prisoner-swap accord with Israel. There are as many as 10,000 Palestinian political and resistance activists languishing in Israeli detention camps. Moreover, efforts to get Israel to release them have been largely unsuccessful, mainly because Israel wants to use these prisoners as a bargaining chip in order to extricate political concessions from the Palestinian Authority.

Israel and Fatah would be the losers. Israel would lose some of its power of deterrence vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Indeed, the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli custody would encourage Palestinians to take Israeli prisoners and use them as bargaining chips to force Israel to release more Palestinian detainees.

Moreover, a successful swap-deal from the Palestinian view point would assure the Palestinian public opinion that the fate of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons doesn't have to depend on Israeli magnanimity.

As to Fatah, the group is worried that the release of that many Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons will significantly boost Hamas's public standing.

This explains the venomous propaganda war Fatah has been waging on Hamas in recent days, such as repeating the manifestly false claim that Hamas has been conducting secret talks with Israel in Geneva.
Indeed, one of the main reasons the former Olmert government refused to reach an accord with Hamas on the Shalit affair stemmed from concerns that the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Zionist custody would weaken the western-backed PA leader Mahmoud Abbas.

According to some news reports from Washington, the Obama administration has already asked Israel to release a thousand Fatah prisoners in order to neutralize any prospective popularity gains by Hamas as a result of a possible prisoner exchange deal with Israel.
The Obama administration is trying to woo Abbas to resume the stalled talks with Israel despite the latter's refusal to freeze Jewish settlement expansion especially in East Jerusalem.

Hence, the American gambit should be viewed, at least in part, as a sort of gimmick or even a bribe to encourage Abbas to return to the failed peace process.

===

Israeli radio: Ramallah and Washington hinder the Shalit deal
29/11/2009
http://www.palestin e-info.co. uk/en/default. aspx?xyz= U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MD I46m9rUxJEpMO% 2bi1s7nwQ5b3guQD oRcogP%2fm9HKXWt vD8W8G%2bXF5IxmC tS6B530BA1GUoWZZ HRJL%2b%2b9U8FTD iJfwVaxat0WoTU5h aKXNtqg59Gbjl% 2b%2bQ9xzKdPYbY% 3d

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israeli radio revealed on Saturday that the Palestinian Authority and Washington are hindering a prisoner exchange deal whereby Palestinian captives are released from Israeli occupation jails in exchange for the Palestinian resistance releasing Gilaad Shalit, fearing that such a deal would raise Hamas's popularity amongst Palestinians.

The radio said that the PA in Ramallah is insisting on some Palestinian prisoners being released as a goodwill gesture to Abbas before concluding a prisoner-exchange deal with the resistance factions holding Shalit.

According the radio, the US administration is expecting that a prisoner-exchange deal is going to weaken the PA in Ramallah, thus Washington requested that a deal is not reached soon or on the terms of Hamas.

The radio also said that the German mediator is going to Gaza in the middle of next week to get Hamas's response to the latest Israeli proposal for the exchange deal.

===

IOF soldiers arrest fifth son of Um Bakir
28/11/2009
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/en/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87MDI46m9rUxJEpMO%2bi1s73T77AN66PlIBTVfjQmO8rG%2fWEN8LO8eiDx0Pfj%2buu37sUfU0tT4iCOPFwN%2bx6BtWkUBBZ9T7hESHjl0dH%2foA1eizpwDtu8A%2b%2fM3zCjOIQZs%3d

NABLUS, (PIC)-- The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) spoilt the Eid joy for the Palestinian old widow Um Bakir in Nablus on Friday and took away her fifth son to join his four brothers in detention.
Local sources reported that large numbers of IOF soldiers broke into the home of late Sheikh Said Bilal and savagely searched it before taking away the only remaining son of the family into custody.

Um Bakir told the Ahrar human rights center that Israel wants to pressure the families of prisoners after it failed to pressure the resistance into concluding the prisoners' exchange deal according to its own terms.

Fuad Al-Khafsh, the center's director, denounced the detention of Omar Bilal, who is the only son for that family out of prison.

He explained that the eldest son Bakir has been held under administrative custody for two years while the other son Muaz, who has been in prison for 11 years, is serving 26 life sentences, Othman, who has served 15 years in jail, is sentenced to life, while Obada was sentenced to ten years and his wife was taken into custody in mid November this year.

Now they have taken the fifth and remaining son of the family Omar, Khafsh pointed out.

He called on the local and international media outlets to shed light on the suffering of this Palestinian family and to expose the criminal image of the Israeli occupation authority.

===

Israel furious over Hamas leader's trip to Switzerland
By Barak Ravid
Haaretz
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/189125-Israel-furious-over-Hamas-leader-s-trip-to-Switzerland

The Foreign Ministry is furious over news that Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official based in the Gaza Strip, recently headed a Hamas
delegation to Switzerland for talks with Swiss diplomats.

A senior Foreign Ministry official said the visit will further
destabilize already shaky relations between Jerusalem and Bern, after
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Switzerland in April for
the "Durban 2" United Nations anti-racism conference.

China's news agency broke the story of Zahar's visit nearly two weeks ago.

Officials at the Israeli Embassy in Bern were surprised by the report, since they knew nothing about the June visit.

The embassy has requested clarifications from the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, but Israeli officials say the responses have not been satisfactory.

One Jerusalem officials said it was many days before the Swiss confirmed the Hamas visit to the embassy.

Swiss officials told Israel's ambassador in Bern, Ilan Elgar, that the Hamas delegation was invited to Geneva by a nongovernmental research institute.

The Foreign Ministry source, however, noted that Swiss diplomats, including the Swiss envoy to the Middle East, met with the delegation during a conference at the institute.

When Elgar requested official clarification regarding the visa issued to the delegation, he was told by the Swiss foreign ministry, "In Switzerland, Hamas is not considered a terrorist organization."

Tensions between Jerusalem and Bern began to build about a year and a half ago, when the Swiss foreign minister went to Iran to sign a major gas purchase contract.

In May, in the wake of Ahmadinejad's visit to Geneva and the official working meeting with him held by Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz, Israel recalled Elgar to Jerusalem for consultations in protest.

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