Prisoners Israel

Israeli and PLO negotiators set aside three issues for further talks after the signing of an accord for limited Palestinian self-rule: PRISONERS: Israel has agreed to free 5,000 of the estimated 8,400 Palestinians it holds in three to four weeks. But Israel has refused to release members of the extremist Hamas movement or Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis. A compromise could permit release of some prisoners who sign a pledge of support for the peace accord.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Violence broke out Tuesday in several Israeli jails and West Bank cities following reports that a Palestinian prisoner died of cancer at a hospital in southern Israel. Palestinians said that Maysara abu Hamdieh, 63, died because of medical negligence and called for an international investigation into the situation of Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons, who number close to 5,000. A spokeswoman for the Israel Prison Service, Sivan Weizman, denied claims of medical negligence and said Hamdieh, who was serving a 99-year term, received proper treatment by specialized doctors.

The wives of four foreign university professors held hostage in Lebanon urged the release of their husbands on the first anniversary of the kidnaping. "We ask all the people to help us in freeing our husbands in the name of humanity," Feryal Polhill told a news conference at Beirut University College, where her husband, Robert, taught. Responsibility for the abductions of Polhill of New York City, Alann Steen of Boston, Jesse Turner of Boise, Ida.

Israel and Egypt announced a prisoner swap Monday that will free American Israeli citizen Ilan Grapel, who was arrested four months ago in Cairo on suspicion of spying for Israel and inciting antigovernment unrest. The New York-born Grapel, who became an Israeli citizen in 2005, will be exchanged for 25 Egyptians being held in Israeli jails, according to a statement from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli officials, as well as Grapel's friends and family, denied that the 27-year-old worked for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

A group of 151 Palestinian prisoners who were supposed to be freed today will remain locked up for now because of a dispute between Israel and the Palestinians over which inmates to release. Under the terms of an interim peace agreement signed Sept. 4 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik, Israel was to release the prisoners today because the Palestinians observe Oct. 8 as an annual day in solidarity with the prisoners. Israel released a first group of 199 prisoners Sept.

APPARENTLY suffering from amnesia, Israel now says that its extraordinary collective punishment of the entire Lebanese population is intended to stop rocket attacks across its northern border. However, Israel's blanket bombardment of Lebanon was sparked not by rockets (which came in retaliation) but by a guerrilla operation against a military target, the aim of which was to capture soldiers as leverage for the release of some of the Lebanese prisoners Israel stubbornly refuses to free.

Israel's Cabinet on Sunday approved a list of 500 Palestinian prisoners to be freed in keeping with commitments made at last week's summit in Egypt. The group represents more than half of the 900 prisoners Israel has agreed to release. They are to be freed in a week or so. The remaining 400 are to be freed in the spring. None of the 500 was involved in attacks on Israelis, a key criterion for previous releases. Most are in the last third of their sentences.

With expressions of sorrow and gestures of reconciliation, Israel sought Tuesday to persuade Palestinians to resume peace negotiations despite a Jewish settler's massacre of praying Muslims in a mosque in the occupied West Bank last week. Israeli military authorities released 570 Palestinian prisoners held on security charges and said 300 more will be freed by Friday--roughly a tenth of the prisoners Israel holds.

Sentenced to seven life terms in prison, Fehti Kadoura-Saleh stepped into newfound freedom Thursday, embraced friends and relatives he had not seen for years and struggled to reconcile his violent past with today's talk of peace. Kadoura-Saleh was one of 199 Palestinians released from Israeli jails just after dawn Thursday in the first tangible result of the interim peace accord signed early this week by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Tensions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are rising rapidly as Palestinian activists mount daily demonstrations to support a week-old hunger strike by an estimated 4,500 prisoners in 13 Israeli jails. Six Palestinians were reported wounded Saturday in the West Bank as Israeli troops opened fire to disperse demonstrations in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron.

APPARENTLY suffering from amnesia, Israel now says that its extraordinary collective punishment of the entire Lebanese population is intended to stop rocket attacks across its northern border. However, Israel's blanket bombardment of Lebanon was sparked not by rockets (which came in retaliation) but by a guerrilla operation against a military target, the aim of which was to capture soldiers as leverage for the release of some of the Lebanese prisoners Israel stubbornly refuses to free.

A towering wall of gray concrete slabs cuts across what was once the main road connecting Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Just inside the barrier, past a spanking new Israeli security terminal, a once-bustling neighborhood has become a ghost town. Shops are shuttered or empty, and the streets deserted. A sign carries the name of an abandoned restaurant. "Memories," it says. Another sign near an empty shell says, "Border Cafeteria."

Israel's Cabinet on Sunday approved a list of 500 Palestinian prisoners to be freed in keeping with commitments made at last week's summit in Egypt. The group represents more than half of the 900 prisoners Israel has agreed to release. They are to be freed in a week or so. The remaining 400 are to be freed in the spring. None of the 500 was involved in attacks on Israelis, a key criterion for previous releases. Most are in the last third of their sentences.

An estimated 1,500 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons launched a hunger strike Sunday, demanding more visits with family members, an end to strip searches and better overall conditions. The demonstration began in three prisons, and advocates expected it to grow to include hundreds more Palestinians held in other facilities on security-related charges.

Israelis knew it as Ketziot. Palestinians called it Ansar 3. Both believed that the sprawling prison camp in the Negev desert was a painful piece of their shared past that they had left behind forever. But in the midst of Operation Defensive Shield, Israel's massive military sweep through the West Bank, the Israeli army announced that it had reopened Ketziot, closed six years ago as Israel and the Palestinians began implementing the 1993 Oslo peace accords.

Israeli President Moshe Katsav commuted the sentence of a woman convicted of failing to tell authorities about a plot to assassinate the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Margalit Har-Shefi, 25, a friend of Rabin's assassin, is to be released from prison Aug. 10 after serving five months of her nine-month sentence. Rabin was shot and killed after a peace rally in Tel Aviv on Nov. 4, 1995, by Yigal Amir, an extremist opponent of his policies of compromise with the Palestinians.

Although U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar believes that all the major obstacles to a complex prisoner exchange have been cleared away, the hostage drama dragged on Friday, stalled by contentious egos and troublesome details. For the time being, apparently, the word is wait . "Most observers feel that the field is ripe now for further action," President Bush told reporters at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Me.

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin thinks that a new demand made by Muslim militants in Lebanon has paved the way for a prisoner exchange, Rabin's spokesman said Thursday. The spokesman, Eitan Haber, referred to a statement issued earlier Thursday in Lebanon announcing the lifting of a threat to kill American hostage Joseph J. Cicippio and demanding freedom for the Muslim leader seized by Israeli commandos plus other Palestinian prisoners.

With thousands of mournful supporters cheering him on, one of Israel's most powerful ultra-Orthodox politicians went to prison Sunday and instantly became a martyr for Sephardic Jewry. Aryeh Deri, the charismatic former leader of the Shas Party, began a three-year sentence for bribery and fraud, capping a political and legal drama that has endured for nearly a decade.

Now that it has pulled out of Lebanon, Israel is under increasing pressure to free its Lebanese prisoners, and the two most notorious appeared at a court hearing to debate their fate Monday--the first time in years that they have been seen in public. Islamic militants whose fighting led to Israel's departure from Lebanon last week after two decades are demanding freedom for all prisoners before they will halt their battle against the Jewish state. But Israel is reluctant.