Ramallah, January 28: Hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday demanding that prisoners be freed from Israeli jails as part of any future peace deal.
In the West’s Bank political capital Ramallah, some 500 people gathered to protest, holding framed pictures of their imprisoned relatives.
“With our blood, with our souls, we sacrifice for you, prisoners,” the demonstrators chanted. “No peace without the release of prisoners.”
Similar events were held in other West Bank towns in a bid to highlight the demand for the release of thousands of Palestinians currently held by Israel.
“This demonstration is part of a series of events organized to further the prisoners issue in any future political negotiations,” Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqaa said. “The prisoners issue must be a main issue on the agenda of any negotiations.”
There are currently some 7,500 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, including 34 women and 310 minors, according to the Palestinian Authority.
The demonstration came days after the latest visit by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who has been struggling for months to convince Israel and the Palestinians to relaunch peace talks suspended more than a year ago.
Negotiations between Israel and Palestine could optimistically start within “weeks or months” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak Wednesday after a day of discussing the issue with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
“The meetings offered an opportunity for in-depth and productive discussions on ways to revitalize and restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian side,” Barak told reporters after meeting with Mubarak and the Egyptian ministers of defense and intelligence in the Sinai resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh. Barak said he hoped negotiations could resume “within the coming weeks or months.”
The Palestinians have said they will not restart negotiations without a complete freeze of Israeli settlements and have rejected as insufficient a limited 10-month moratorium imposed in November.
——Agencies