Today's Situation

FREE TO GO, July 20, 2007

Israel released 255 Palestinian prisoners from its jails on Friday, in accordance with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's promised goodwill gestures to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The Palestinians were put on buses by the Israel Prisons Service, and by mid-morning they had reached the Beituniya checkpoint, Israel Radio reported.

The release came after the High Court of Justice rejected late Thursday night a petition by the Almagor Victims of Terror organization filed earlier in the week to delay the release in order to allow the group to study more closely the list of prisoners to be freed.

According to Arutz 7, one of the prisoners who had been slated for release is still in jail, after the Prisons Service said that 'doubts had surfaced' regarding the prisoner and he will remain incarcerated pending the results of a security investigation.

The other 255 are now on their way to Ramallah, where they will be received in a homecoming ceremony presided over by Abbas. After laying wreaths on the tomb of Yasser Arafat, they will be free to go to their homes. Celebrations in the PA are expected to be relatively low-key, because hopes that high profile prisoners would be released were disappointed.

In the meantime, Ynet reports that the head of the PA's Prisoners Ministry, Ziad Abu Ein, said Friday that the 30 of the prisoners are Hamas members and two are from Islamic Jihad. 'They are all our prisoners and they are all our sons,' he said, adding that the PA was proud that Hamas men were among those being freed.

Until this statement, the official information regarding the list of prisoners was that 85 percent are Fateh members and the rest are from the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In comments published Friday in Yedioth Ahronoth, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has warned Israel that it needs to do more to improve the atmosphere. 'Your policy is a policy of small change. You do a little here, a little there,' he told the daily. 'Israel is a large, strong country. Israel can allow itself to be more bold,' he added.

In Haaretz, meanwhile, Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdelelah Al-Khatib was warned that there will be no peace in the region unless the Palestinian problem is resolved.

'Peace with Syria is no alternative to peace with the Palestinians; the heart of the problem in the region is the Palestinian problem, and without a solution to it there will be no peace in the region,' Khatib said.

Elsewhere on the diplomatic front, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said Thursday that the Middle East peace conference announced on Monday by President Bush would take place in New York in September. Aboul-Gheit also said that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would participate in a July 31st meeting in Sharm El-Sheikh, and would speak there with Arab leaders about the conference. 

Finally, The Jerusalem Post reports that the Defense Ministry will launch its most advanced spy satellite to date aboard an Indian rocket in September. The new satellite is capable of transmitting tiny images in all weather conditions.

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