Israel won’t free Palestinian prisoners
Middle East Desk Report

JERUSALEM—Israel has rebuffed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ request to free Palestinian prisoners ahead of a major Muslim holiday, insisting that Palestinian militants first agree to release a captured Israeli soldier.
The decision was at odds with recent overtures by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to bolster the moderate Abbas in the eyes of the Palestinian people, who voted the militantly anti-Israel Hamas group into power nearly one year ago. Separately, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported that Olmert was prepared to hold back-channel talks on a blueprint for a final peace deal, as Abbas has proposed. Olmert spokeswoman Miri Eisin had no comment on the report. The estimated 8,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails enjoy iconic status in Palestinian society, and Israel usually frees a small number at Muslim holiday time in a goodwill gesture. Last week, at their first official meeting, Abbas asked Olmert to do the same before the Eid al-Adha holiday, which begins on Saturday. Olmert said he would consider it, Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said, but just hours before the Muslim holiday and the Jewish Sabbath were to begin, no release had been announced. “Right now, it’s not on the agenda,” so long as Cpl. Gilad Shalit remains in captivity, Eisin said.
Erekat interpreted Olmert’s reluctance to mean he was unwilling to risk the wrath of Israeli public opinion by releasing Palestinian prisoners without assuring Hamas-linked militants would free Shalit, seized in a June 25 cross-border raid. “It’s unfortunate,” Erekat said of the decision, adding that it would hurt Abbas’ standing. Olmert has said repeatedly since Shalit’s capture that he would not free Palestinians before the soldier was released.
One of the Hamas-linked groups holding Shalit said Thursday that progress has been made toward a prisoner exchange, and media reports cited Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas as saying the soldier would be released soon. But neither said when a swap might take place, and such claims of progress have been made in the past. In their landmark meeting on Saturday, Olmert agreed to ease restrictions on Palestinian travel in the West Bank and to release $100 million in frozen funds to the Palestinian Authority — moves that prompted outcries among hard-liners in Israel. Releasing prisoners before Shalit was freed would likely have angered Olmert’s opponents even further. “I think that a gesture that in normal times is accepted at holiday time must not happen today because it would be misinterpreted,” Israeli Cabinet minister Zeev Boim told Israel Radio.
Shalit’s father, Noam, who has been critical of the Israeli government’s conduct regarding his son, said he advocated a pre-holiday release of Palestinian prisoners. “I thought it might generate some positive momentum toward a final deal to free Gilad and other prisoners,” he told Israel Radio. In a letter in Arabic that appeared Friday in an East Jerusalem newspaper, Al-Quds, Shalit’s parents assured their son they were doing everything to win his release and appealed to his captors to treat him well.
With regard to the peace talks, Yediot said Olmert had no intention of abandoning the internationally backed “road map” peace plan that Israel and the Palestinians agreed to in June 2003. The plan, which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, stalled shortly after it was presented. In Egypt on Wednesday, Abbas said he’d like the two sides to start closed-door talks on some of their most intractable disputes, including final borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. He said he proposed such backdoor negotiations to Olmert at their weekend meeting, and that the Israeli leader promised to consider the suggestion. Abbas did not spell out why he sought backdoor talks. But as one of the architects of the 1993 Oslo peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, negotiated secretly, he is known to champion quiet, informal diplomacy. Palestinian militants, meanwhile, fired eight rockets at Israel on Friday, the highest number in a single day since a Nov. 26 truce went into effect. On Wednesday, Olmert ordered the military to attack rocket squads, abandoning the policy of restraint it had adopted since the cease-fire.
So far, Israel, which waged a five-month campaign against rocket squads before the truce took hold, has not carried out any attacks.