Ramallah: The Palestinian Ministry of Detainees' Affairs expressed dissatisfaction over the second phase of the Shalit prisoner swap deal and held Hamas negotiators responsible for giving Israel the full right to choose 550 Palestinian prisoners to be released on Sunday.
Speaking to Gulf News, Eisa Qaraqei, the Minister of Detainees' Affairs said that Hamas should not have given Israel the right to choose the Palestinian prisoners to be released in the second stage of the deal.
The Israeli Prison Service published the names of those to be released.
"Ministry officials have studied the names of the prisoners included in the second stage and found that at least 70 per cent of them were given prison terms ranging from a month to five years imprisonments," he said.
"At least 336 prisoners out of the 550 prisoners included in the deal will be released this year [till the end of 2011 and during the year 2012]," he said.
He added that 24 prisoners were officially scheduled to be released before the end of the year and that 72 of them are scheduled for official release in January.
Qaraqei said that the ministry hoped that all the Palestinian women prisoners will be released in the second stage. Only four women prisoners will be included in the second stage and five will be left in Israeli prisons.
Qaraqei said that the second stage of the deal did not include any of the 123 prisoners who were arrested before the Oslo Accords in 1993, nor did it include any of the disabled or the sick prisoners.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has been asking for the release of all the Palestinian prisoners arrested before the Oslo Accords.
