Israel frees prisoners with peace deal signing

Israel frees prisoners with peace deal signing

JERUSALEM (Reuter): Israel freed hundreds of Palestinian prisoners with the signing in Cairo yesterday of a peace deal giving Palestinians control over occupied land for the first time.

A last-minute snag over a map that kept PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from signing the agreement in Cairo also briefly held up the prisoner release.

Palestinian sources at PLO headquarters in the occupied Gaza Strip said some 1,000 prisoners would be released yesterday -- 650 from Gaza and the rest from the occupied West Bank.

An advance group of 19 PLO officials entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt to lay the groundwork for the 9,000-strong Palestinian police force due to take over from Israeli troops within three weeks.

Hardline foes on both sides staged protests against the accord launching Israel's pullout from the occupied Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho.

Palestinian groups opposed to peace with Israel forced businesses to close in the major cities of the West Bank though no strike calls were issued in Gaza or Jericho.

Israeli troops forcibly removed hundreds of Jewish settlers trying to occupy an ancient synagogue in Jericho hours before the signing. The synagogue has been a rallying point for rightist and religious Israelis opposed to ceding occupied land they say God gave the Jews.

Military sources said the prisoner release, aimed at boosting Palestinian confidence after 27 years of Israeli occupation, began with seven buses taking some 200 prisoners from Ketziot camp in southern Israel to the Gaza Strip.

But then, as Rabin and Arafat pointed fingers and shook their heads at each other in a tiff in Cairo viewed by a world audience, the prisoner release was stopped. It resumed a short time later with the resumption of the signing ceremony.

"We can confirm that seven buses have left and they're on their way now. They were on their way and they were stopped because things were unclear for a while," said an Israeli security official.

Thousands of Palestinians waited at the Nahal Oz checkpoint to Gaza to give the prisoners a hero's welcome.

5,000 prisoners

Israel agreed during months of negotiations with the PLO to release about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners within three weeks of the signing, half of those within days. Human rights groups say Israel holds about 9,500 Palestinian prisoners.

Military sources said in an official statement that Rabin approved the release of Palestinians who backed the peace deal along with others from groups that rejected it.

Israel Radio said all but about four were members of Arafat's mainstream Fatah faction who backed the Declaration of Principles that the PLO signed with Israel on the White House lawn last September.

The other four -- two from the Islamic Jihad movement and two from the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas -- had promised to support the historic peace deal despite their groups' avowed opposition, the radio said.

Arafat, eager to gain support from Palestinians in the occupied territories wary of any deal with their longtime enemy, hopes to show himself as representative of all Palestinians, including those in opposition.