Palestinian prisoners 'moved' before Israel release

[Turborama]

Source: BBC

Twenty-six Palestinian prisoners set for release in the early hours of Wednesday have been moved to a jail in central Israel, reports say.

Direct peace talks are due to resume in Jerusalem hours after they are taken to crossings in Gaza and the West Bank.

=snip=

The 26 long-term prisoners set for release are the first of 104 Palestinian and Israeli Arab inmates to be freed over the next few months as part of the agreement to restart US-brokered direct peace talks after a three-year hiatus.

According to Israeli media, they were taken to Ayalon prison in Ramle overnight ahead of medical checks and a meeting with International Red Cross representatives on Tuesday morning.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23678238

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Analysis (from the same link)


Kevin Connolly
BBC News, Jerusalem

It ought to feel like a moment of optimism in the long and tortured history of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but somehow it does not.

It is almost exactly 20 years since the then US President Bill Clinton brought the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin together with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to sign an agreement based on extraordinary secret negotiations in the Norwegian capital Oslo.

The truth is that today's negotiators are taking a few steps down a road along which their predecessors travelled rather further.

Back then, the prisoner releases were larger too.

In the heady days of the mid-1990s Israel released, in stages, 4,000 Palestinian prisoners.

This time around it proposes to release 104 over a nine-month period with the first 26 set free in the middle of this week.

[oberliner]

1. Most of these were convicted of murder

Examples:

Salah Ibrahim Ahmed Mugdad, who was arrested in June 1993 for the murder of Israel Tenenbaum, a 72-year-old security guard at the Sirens Hotel in Netanya. The Fatah member struck Tenenbaum on the head with an iron bar and stole a television set from the hotel.

Mustafa Othman al-Haj, who was arrested in June 1989 for the murder of 48-year-old Steven Frederick Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld had been hiking in the hills near Ariel and was stabbed with his own knife by a group of shepherds, who hid his body.

Salameh Abdallah Musleh, who was charged in October 1993 with the murder of Reuven David two years earlier. David, 59, owned a Petah Tikva grocery store. He was beaten and robbed by Musleh and an accomplice.

Atiyeh Salem Musa, who, along with an accomplice, used an ax to murder a Jewish co-worker, 67-year-old Isaac Rotenberg, during Passover 1994. The murder took place while Rotenberg was hunched on his knees fixing a floor at his place of employment in Petah Tikva. He was struck on the back of his neck, dying two days later.

Salah Mahmoud Mukled, who was arrested in July 1993 for the stabbing death in a Gush Katif greenhouse of Yeshayahu Deutsch, his Jewish employer, and the attempted murder of another local resident.

http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Profiling-the-prisoners-set-to-be-released-this-week-322861