Israeli ministers approve list of Palestinian prisoners set to go free Monday

A government ministerial panel on Saturday night finalized a list of 26 Palestinian prisoners set to go free late Monday, in the third of a four-phase series of prisoner releases as part of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

The panel met earlier Saturday to approve the list of prisoners, all convicted of involvement in the murder or attempted murder of Israelis prior to the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords. They have all served between 19 and 28 years of their sentences, according to a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office.

“If the released Palestinian convicts will engage in hostilities, they will be re-incarcerated so as to serve out the rest of their sentences,” the statement read.

The Israel Prison Service will publish the names of the prisoners set for release on its website sometime overnight Saturday-Sunday.

The 26 are set to go free late on Monday, after a legally mandated 48-hour period during which opponents can appeal the release of individual prisoners.

Families of terror victims demonstrated Saturday night against the scheduled releases. Representatives of the families claimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been refusing to meet with them.

Israel’s Channel 10 news, which on Friday night claimed Secretary of State John Kerry had proposed that the US would release spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard around the time of the fourth and final phase if Israel would agree to set free Israeli Arab terror convicts, reported Saturday night that Israel was still trying to ascertain whether the offer had the support of US President Barack Obama.

Kerry is expected back in the region on January 1 — his tenth visit this year — to try to push Israeli and Palestinian negotiators toward agreeing on a “framework” deal covering all the core issues of dispute in the peace process. But the Palestinians are threatening to scuttle the talks altogether if Netanyahu goes ahead with reported plans to announce next week the construction of 1,400 new homes in east Jerusalem and West Bank settlements.

Jibril Rajoub, a senior PA official who is close to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, on Saturday night called Israeli settlement building “official terrorism,” urged Israel to halt it, and warned: “I hope we don’t get to the stage where neither of us can count the number of bodies” in a new upsurge of violence.

Speaking on Channel 2’s Meet the Press, Rajoub said that the “worst thing [that could happen] is the loss of hope on the Palestinian side.” Amid talks of a third intidafa given the uptick in attacks against Israelis, the official claimed the Palestinian Authority would not lead its people to violence and bloodshed and hoped to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 2014.

Science Minister Yaakov Peri (Yesh Atid) said Saturday that he opposed the new settlement plans, and that they would do nothing to “calm” any of the families that are protesting against the prisoner releases. He also said Yesh Atid can’t remain indefinitely in a government “that’s not making every effort” to advance the peace process.

The High Court of Justice on Thursday rejected an appeal against the release of the 26 Palestinian prisoners.

The petition was filed by members of the Schijveschuurder family, whose parents and three siblings were murdered in a gruesome suicide bombing at the Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem in 2001.