The Cabinet voted Sunday morning to approve Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s latest “goodwill gesture” to Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, freedom for 200 PA terrorists. Four ministers from the Shas Sephardic religious party and Transportation Minister Sha'ul Mofaz voted against the move.
In a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office following the vote, Olmert said, "This is a gesture and a trust-building move aimed at bolstering the moderates in the Palestinian Authority and the peace process."
The release is expected to come next Monday, on the eve of what was to be U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s expected return to the region in her latest effort to keep the final status talks moving between Israel and the PA. Assistant Secretary of State David Welch told reporters over the weekend that there is a strong likelihood, however, that the crisis between Russia and Georgia may force Rice to "recalibrate the schedule a little bit."
The list of terrorists to be returned to the streets will reportedly include some with “blood on their hands” – that is, those who have been directly involved in attacks that resulted in the murder of Israelis.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for the prime minister, said the decision was made to “strengthen the negotiating process.” He compared Mahmoud Abbas’s winnings, which come as the result of direct talks, to, what he described as, the meager result gained by Hizbullah after years of indirect talks.
“If we compare what Abu Mazen (Abbas) will get in two weeks, what Hizbullah got looks miniscule,” he pointed out.
In last month’s exchange deal, Hizbullah returned the badly decomposed bodies of kidnapped and murdered IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. In return, the Iranian and Syrian-backed Lebanese terrorist group won the freedom of jailed child-killer Samir Kuntar as well as four Hizbullah guerrilla fighters. In addition, Israel also exhumed and returned the bodies of 199 Arab terrorists, each delivered in brand-new coffins.
Israel has also dismantled more than 100 security checkpoints and roadblocks in Judea and Samaria over the past three months that have been used to prevent terrorists from entering pre-1967 Israel, and granted hundreds of additional work permits for PA Arabs in Israel.
Abbas last week rejected a final status proposal by Olmert that would have handed over to the PA 93 percent of Judea and Samaria as well as additional land in the Negev along the Gaza border as well as other security concessions.
Abbas rejected the plan outright because it did not promise geographical contiguity between Gaza, Judea and Samaria – which historically has never been the case – and did not promise to hand over half of Jerusalem to become the capital of the new PA state.