Israel to free 250 Palestinian prisoners

[David]

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday that 250 Palestinian prisoners would be freed in a goodwill gesture, as Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas urged Israel to maintain the Gaza truce.

The pair met in Jerusalem for the first time in two months, amid rising tension in and around the besieged Gaza Strip where Israeli forces and Palestinian militants have engaged in almost daily tit-for-tat attacks since November 4.

"Abbas had asked him to free Palestinian prisoners and Olmert told him of the decision to release 250 at the beginning of December," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

In a similar move in August, Israel freed 198 Palestinian prisoners. More than 11,000 Palestinians are still held in Israeli prisons.

A senior Israeli official said that none of the prisoners to be freed belongs to radical Palestinian movements such as Hamas, the Islamist movement which seized power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007.

Since the Hamas takeover, the secular Abbas has held sway only in the West Bank.

But he said that during his talks at Olmert's official residence in Jerusalem, Abbas stressed "the need to maintain the truce in Gaza because it eases the suffering of the Palestinian people."

He also urged Palestinian militants not to shatter the fragile truce that went into effect in and around Gaza on June 19. "In other words, stop the futile rocket firings that don't help the Palestinian cause in any way," Abbas said.

Abbas also met British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it was "vital" the ceasefire be maintained. "The discussions you have had today (with Olmert) seem to me to be a very important contribution to that," Miliband told the Palestinian leader.

Miliband earlier toured Sderot, an Israeli town which regularly comes under rocket fire from neighbouring Gaza.

A flare-up in violence last week prompted Israel to further tighten its blockade and completely seal off the aid-dependent Gaza Strip, though it allowed the delivery of humanitarian supplies on Monday for the first time in almost two weeks.

Olmert told Abbas that Hamas is to blame for violations of the truce in and around the Gaza Strip, and warned that if violence escalates, "Israel will have to respond," a senior Israeli official said.

On Monday, several rockets fired from Gaza hit southern Israel without causing any casualties.

Each side has accused the other of violating the ceasefire in the latest flare-up of violence in which volleys of rockets and mortar rounds have been launched at Israel and 15 Gaza militants killed since November 4.

Israel generally responds to the Gaza attacks by tightening the blockade it imposed after the 2007 Hamas takeover, but said it allowed 33 truckloads of humanitarian supplies into the coastal strip on Monday.

A UN spokesman said that many more deliveries will be needed in the impoverished and overcrowded territory.

"We cannot have another period when people are not getting their food assistance. We cannot allow people to get punished in that way," said Chris Gunness of the UN Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food to 750,000 Gazans -- half the population.

The violence as well as the political and geographical division of the Palestinian territories between Hamas-ruled Gaza and the West Bank under Abbas have complicated the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestinians and the international community say continued Jewish settlement activity in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is major stumbling block in the talks that were relaunched at a US conference in November 2007 after a seven-year hiatus.

"I called for a halt to all settlement activity," Abbas said after his talks with Olmert.