From AP via Fox News:
JERUSALEM — Israel's Cabinet on Sunday approved the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners, a long-overdue gesture Israel had agreed to as part of a Mideast truce package.Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told the Cabinet that the prisoner release would strengthen Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and "the moderate forces in the Palestinian Authority." Sharon's appeal meshed with recent U.S. efforts to shore up Abbas in the face of severe challenges from Palestinian militants.
The ministers voted 18-3 to approve the release. A ministerial panel will now meet to compile a list of those eligible to be freed. No one directly involved in deadly attacks on Israelis would be released, but Israel might be more flexible than in the past and free prisoners who haven't completed two-thirds of their terms, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his position.
The Palestinians want Israel to consult them on which prisoners to release.
"This is not enough," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said. He also asked that Israel resume handing over West Bank cities to Palestinian control immediately, as it pledged to do as part of the February truce package...
Can anything the Israelis do ever be "enough?"
When the entire Jewish population of Israel is standing in 7 feet of water offshore, they will be saying 'not deep enough!'
And this:
'The Palestinians want Israel to consult them on which prisoners to release.'
Those are the ones who should be held. Release the rest!
too PC!
POWs should be held -as in all wars -until war has ended
however, in the case of islamofacism - it will never end -even if all Israelis were to leave
G-d forbid
jihadis will find new enemies for its eternal/all-consuming hatred of life
"relgion of peace" - peace apparently meaning everlasting kind - once you're dead
I had to puke when I read that...
I have to admit that I'm ashamed to be an Israeli because of the folly of my government.
I literally believe we have become our own worst enemy.
Get Netanyahu back, Sharon needs to go.
Yeah, we LIKE the "Bibi (sp?) solution".
The tactical methods of preventing withdrawal from Gaza and the northern Shomron are not what concern the seasoned activist most, though. “What I am afraid of is not that we will lose – I believe that with G-d’s help we will win. What I am afraid of is what will happen after. If, after we win this battle, we again get a leader like [former Prime Minister] Binyamin Netanyahu - whom we got after we won the election of ’96, after Oslo, when we thought all our problems were solved – we will again find ourselves at square one. We will again find that someone who we voted for and are happy with, who we brought to power to save us, will tell us, ‘What can I do? It's a decision that was already made, it's a law, the whole world is expecting of us, we need the United States’ backing’ and so on.”
- Moshe Feiglin, Cracks Forming in Sharon's Plans
What Israel needs to do is finish the god damn wall, and start thinking about there own needs for once.
Good god. Someone send the Israeli PM into the middle of the palestinians. Lets see how long he survives, after all these faith gestures.
Reminds me of 1971, when India took 90,000 soldiers prisoners and wanted to try them for war crimes in Bangaldesh. They killed all the doctors, engineers and young men. Then they raped many many women. About 300,000 war babies were produced from that. Can you imagine how many women they raped, if 300,000 conceived?? Yet, the 90,000 were released to pakistan as 'faith gestures'. And these were supposed to be 'disciplined' muslims....(soldiers).
Israel is even smaller than India. Can it really afford to let the enemy out AGAIN and AGAIN??
Israel
Note to Israel and our military: Take no prisoners.
Looks like the terror networks are about to become 400 savages bigger. Do they have to release them while they're alive, or can they release them after they meet Allah?
POW's? Who said that?
Are we now also adjusting to the PC madness without thinking? These are hardcore Jihadi's. murderers, killers, nothing else.
Summary execution will do.
If Israel is stupid enough to release these future Hamas recruits, I hope they have permanent GPS suppositories surreptitiously inserted, at least.
Until there are two coherently shaped 'states', there can be no peace. The current '[road]map', based on the 1947 U.N. partition structure, is doomed by its laughably irregular 'cantons'- the interpenetrating Israeli and 'Palestinian' "areas". (It would be like a doctor doing a "combined kidney and heart transplant" by grafting one kidney up to one ventricle of the heart, and then slicing off and lowering the other ventricle of the heart down to sew to the second kidney.)
You don't get sanity when you plan with madness.
Israel should immediately execute any terrorist that it chatches. Not only will that prevent the terrorists from committing atrocities, but it will also make the terror masters think twice before plotting attacks agait Israel.