Israel publishes list of 199 Palestinians to be freed

The longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel was included in an official list yesterday of 199 people due to be released next week in a declared bid to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas.

Said al-Atabeh, 57, of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), was arrested in 1977 and sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of involvement in bombings that killed an Israeli woman and wounded dozens of people.

He and 198 other Palestinians are due to go free on August 25. Their release will coincide with a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who Israeli and Palestinian officials said would try to spur progress towards a peace deal.

A release list published by the Israel Prisons Service also included Mohammad Abu Ali, 52, who was jailed for life in 1980 for killing a leader of Jewish settlers near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank.

Abu Ali received a second life term for the jailhouse killing of a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israeli authorities. Though in prison, he was elected to the Palestinian parliament in 2006.

Some 11,000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons and securing their release is a highly emotive issue in Palestinian society as President Abbas pursues an elusive peace deal with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Several Israeli cabinet ministers had opposed freeing Palestinians "with blood on their hands", an Israeli term for attacks that caused Israeli casualties, but a ministerial committee approved the list earlier yesterday.

"I was afraid that I would die before I saw him," said Mr Atabeh's 75-year-old mother Widad. She said Israeli authorities last allowed her to visit him in prison more than two years ago.

The son of the dead Israeli woman, Tzila Galili, killed in a vegetable market explosion carried out by Mr Atabeh's DFLP cell, told Israel's YNet news website: "The terrorist who killed my mother should have been killed, not jailed."

Israeli government officials said they hoped the release would boost popular support for President Abbas, whose Fatah faction lost control of the Gaza Strip to Hamas Islamists last year, and show Palestinians that dialogue can achieve results.