Region | Palestinian Territories
All Hamas prisoners to be freed, Abbas aide says
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered the release of "all" Hamas prisoners, including those held on security charges, a senior aide told Al Jazeera television from Ramallah on Monday.
- Agencies
- Published: 23:04 June 22, 2009
- Two Palestinians clamber over a fence as others wait in line to cross into the Bethlehem checkpoint to enter Israel for aday’s work.
- Image Credit: EPA
Ramallah: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered the release of "all" Hamas prisoners, including those held on security charges, a senior aide told Al Jazeera television from Ramallah on Monday.
Azam Ahmad, the head of the parliamentary bloc of Abbas' Fatah party charged with holding reconciliation talks with the rival Hamas movement ruling Gaza, told the Doha-based channel the release would get underway in the coming days.
The Palestinian Ma'an news agency, however, quoted sources close to Abbas as saying Hamas prisoners would only be released on "condition they do not pose a threat to general security and law and order".
Abbas had issued orders to re-evaluate the files of all Hamas prisoners in the West Bank and to release those who met this condition, they said.
The president's office in Ramallah was not immediately available for comment on the reports, as Abbas was away touring Middle Eastern capitals.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad set a goal yesterday of establishing a Palestinian state within two years.
"I call on all our people to unite around the project of establishing a state and to strengthen its institutions ... so that the Palestinian state becomes, by the end of next year or within two years at most, a reality," he said in a speech.
"Achieving this goal within two years is possible," he told an audience at Al Quds university near occupied Jerusalem.
Fayyad, a technocrat with no significant political base of his own, heads a newly aligned cabinet with more ministers from the dominant Fatah faction.
In line with Abbas's policy, he signalled no change in the Palestinian refusal to resume peace talks with Israel until it freezes Jewish colonies in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians, he said, should win world support by building up all the institutions for the independent state they seek.
"I think the need for it has become more pressing after the speech of the Israeli prime minister tried to bypass the international consensus that calls for Israel to implement its obligations," Fayyad said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech on June 14, said he was ready to accept the establishment of a Palestinian state, but only if shorn of many of the attributes of sovereignty, notably an army and control of its own borders.
Will the release of Hamas prisoners help heal inter-Palestinian division? What other steps can be taken by both sides to forge unity? Tell us below.
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