IDF to recommend releasing more Palestinian prisoners

The Israel Defense Forces will advise the government to release additional Palestinian prisoners, in an effort to strengthen Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, a senior IDF officer told Haaretz on Tuesday.

The General Staff believes that prisoner releases are what Abbas most needs from Israel, since the Palestinian public is pressing him on this issue. Such releases would also give Abbas an achievement that Hamas, which has tried to gain prisoner releases by kidnapping Israelis, has thus far not achieved. For this reason, the army believes that prisoner releases are also in Israel's interest.

Nevertheless, the senior officer said, the criteria for such releases must be "carefully examined," not "completely eliminated." Thus far, Israel has refused to release anyone who killed an Israeli. "We must also take into account the fact that releasing murderers is a 'red flag' from the standpoint of the families of Israeli terror victims," the officer explained.

The IDF believes that the events of the past few weeks in the Gaza Strip reflect the first signs of a PA effort to fight Hamas: The PA arrested several Hamas members for bearing arms in public, thereby igniting gun battles between Hamas and the PA security services in which three Palestinians were killed. Nevertheless, the General Staff views the PA's actions to date as "too little, and perhaps also too late," the officer said.

The officer also said that Israel's harsh response to Hamas's launch of Qassam rockets at Sderot last month has thus far borne fruit: On Sunday, when soldiers shot three Palestinians near the fence between Gaza and Israel, the terrorist organizations did not respond by firing rockets into Israel, as they have in the past. While Hamas's military wing opposed the decision to stop firing Qassams at Israel, which was made by the organization's political leadership in Gaza, it has thus far obeyed it - though the
argument is still raging.

"The Palestinians, both the PA and Hamas, understand that from our standpoint, there's a new situation in the Strip since the IDF's withdrawal," the officer said. "A fence is a fence  and if people crawl up to it in the middle of the night, we'll react. Things aren't the same as they were in the past. And we will not balk at measures to make it clear that the situation has changed."

The officer said that the IDF supports the diplomatic campaign to force Hamas to choose between entering Palestinian politics and being a terrorist organization. Thus far, he noted, Israel's demand that Hamas either disarm or be barred from running in the parliamentary elections has won support from the American administration and even from some European governments. But the General Staff views Abbas's upcoming visit to Washington as the key: If U.S. President George Bush backs Israel's stance on this issue when he meets with Abbas, the Palestinians may be forced to make a decision.

Even if the PA does make disarmament a condition for running in the elections, the General Staff does not think that Hamas will resume terror attacks, because the Palestinian public does not currently support such attacks, the officer said.

"We need to keep up the pressure, and let Hamas break its head," he concluded.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/634299.html