In the very last moment of his term, Ehud Olmert took the decision to set right a small part of a longlasting injustice and set free two people who, in fact, should have been freed already with the signature of the Olso Agreement in 1993 – the time when the Government of Israel embarked on direct negotiations with these prisoners' superiors and direct commanders. For that, Olmert deserves some praise, and it is to be hoped that his act will be continued - and on a larger scale", says Gush Shalom, the Israeli Peace Bloc.

"The release of 200 Palestinian prisoners of 11,000 who are incarcerated in the prisons of the State of Israel, among them two who are held for more than thirty years already, is a very partial correction of a prolonged injustice. The demagogic term 'prisoner with blood on his hand is utterly misleading. Had these been ordinary criminal prisoners convicted of murder, they would have long since gotten a parole from the President of Israel. Had it been settlers and their helpers, like the members of the 'Jewish Underground' who murdered Palestinians and crippled others for life, they would have been pardoned long since – had they been imprisoned in the first place. Not to speak of the hundreds and even thousands of soldiers and officers in the IDF, whose hands are stained with the blood of Palestinian civilians - including that of children and babies. Most of them were never put on trial. Of the ones who were hardly any has been imprisoned, and those who did get into prison were shortly set free. The perpetrators of the 1956 Kufr Qassem Massacre – the most horrifying deed in Israeli history, in which 49 people were murdered deliberately and in cold blood – were released from prison within a few years. The term 'blood on the hands', as justification and pretext to keep a person behind bars for decades, even when he is old and sick, is directed solely at Palestinian prisoners".

Contact: Adam Keller adam@gush-shalom.org