Israel is offering to free additional Palestinian prisoners in exchange for extending the peace talks by several months and for the Palestinians not taking unilateral steps in the United Nations during that period, said a senior Israeli official. Israel is waiting for a response to the offer, which was made via the United States.
If the Palestinians agree, Israel will free the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners over the next few days, but this apparently will not include Israeli Arab prisoners.
“At the request of the United States, Israel was willing to be flexible, to make a greater effort and to give more, so that the Palestinians would agree to extend the talks,” said the source.
The Walla! website reported that Israel offered to release 400 Palestinian prisoners, along with the fourth group of prisoners in exchange for another 6 months of negotiations with the Palestinians. According to the report, Israel agreed to release Israeli Arab prisoners, although this was conditioned on Israel choosing all the prisoners who would be released. A senior Israeli official said the report was inaccurate, although he did not completely dismiss it.
The Palestinians said over the past two weeks that it would agree to extend the deadline of negotiations with Israel only if Israel releases additional prisoners to the 104 it agreed to release as part of the deal for renewing talks last July, along with freezing settlement construction.
It is not clear whether, along with moves to release more prisoners, Israel will also agree to take steps to curb construction in the settlements. If Israel does release more prisoners, and if construction is curbed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is likely to fall apart, especially considering the objection of Economy Minister Naftali Bennett’s party, Habayit Hayehudi, to the moves.
Meanwhile, a senior Palestinian official told Haaretz on Saturday that all the documents needed for the PA to apply to various UN institutions are already prepared, and are sitting on President Mahmoud Abbas’ desk awaiting his decision and signature.
The official added that Abbas probably won’t decide on the matter for another few days or up to two weeks, since he wants to give the Americans a chance to resolve the current crisis over the fourth prisoner release, and perhaps find a way to extend Israeli-Palestinian talks for another six to 12 months. The Palestinian official said talks with the Americans on this issue were continuing.
But other senior PA and Fatah officials told Haaretz that Abbas feels he no longer has anything left to lose, and is telling the Americans that if they don’t solve the crisis now, they’ll have to deal with his successor – if there is one.
Officials in Ramallah are already talking about who will succeed him. One said, “[Abbas] knows it. He won’t leave the arena as the leader who conceded national principles for the sake of his personal survival.”
On Saturday evening, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was summoned to Jerusalem for another meeting with the American mediators.
Martin Indyk, the U.S. envoy to the peace talks, has been shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah since early Friday morning in an effort to resolve the crisis, but so far without success. The official, who is close to the PA negotiating team, said Israel’s behavior presents a challenge to American credibility, and the Americans are therefore leaving no stone unturned in an effort to find a solution.
Qadura Fares, chairman of the Palestinian Prisoners Society, told Haaretz that Abbas will not agree to waive the release of the last batch of prisoners, nor will he waive his demand that this final batch include 14 Israeli Arabs. A proposal that Israel should determine which prisoners to release, and free them only at a later date, is completely unacceptable, he said.
“We’ve already tried this proposal in the past, and then Israel freed prisoners who in any case were about to be released, or prisoners who were essentially just criminals, whose release had no Palestinian national significance,” he said, referring to prisoners who weren’t involved in terror attacks against Israelis. “Therefore, any release, if it isn’t according to a [PA] list, must be based on categories – like the sick, women, children and administrative detainees – or senior prisoners like Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Saadat.”
Barghouti, a senior official in Abbas’ Fatah party, is serving five life sentences for murdering Israelis. Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is serving a life sentence for the murder of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi.
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