Israelis, Palestinians to meet under settlement cloud

Palestinian prisoner Salah al-Sahair was freed after 21 years in an Israeli jail Ramallah – Nihad Al Taweel The first Palestinian prisoners to be freed as part of a deal enabling Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were released by Israeli authorities overnight on Tuesday, amid anger at a pledge by Israel to build thousands of new settler homes. ? Twenty-six out of 104 detainees were released, 15 to the Gaza Strip and 11 to the West Bank.
The men, most of whom were serving life sentences for killing Israelis, committed their crimes ?before the 1993 Oslo agreement, and belong to various Islamist and Palestinian factions.?
In Ramallah, 11 prisoners were welcomed by Palestinian leaders including President Mahmoud Abbas, alongside thousands of cheering, dancing supporters.
"This is the first group," Abbas told the crowd at an official welcoming ceremony at his Muqataa headquarters compound.
"We shall continue until we free all the prisoners from Israeli jails," he said.
The freed prisoners placed a wreath at the tomb of the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and ?read the Fateha (the opening verse of the Koran) for him.?
Meanwhile, a further 15 released detainees crossed into the Gaza Strip at around 2240 GMT, and were mobbed by relatives as they got out of a bus next to the border.
Islamist and national leaders, relatives and thousands of supporters travelled from across Gaza to meet the prisoners at the Beit Hanoun crossing.?
The prisoner release provoked anger in Israel, especially particularly among relatives of those they killed.
But the Oslo-based European network for defending Palestinian prisoner rights (UFree Network) ?said the step was long overdue, and criticised the use of prisoners’ rights as a bargaining tool in negotiations.
The prisoner release came just hours before a new round of peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel on Wednesday, the first direct discussions since 2010.?
But the talks look set to be overshadowed by a deepening rift over settlements, sparked by Israel's announcement in the past three days that it would move ahead with 2129 new settler homes, more than three quarters of them in annexed east Jerusalem.
Housing Minister Uri Ariel vowed to build thousands more settler homes in the West Bank.
"We will build thousands of homes in the coming year in Judaea and Samaria," Ariel told public radio. "No one dictates where we can build... This is just the first course," he added, hinting at more building to come.
The decision by the Palestinian Authority to return to the negotiating table has sparked anger from all ?Palestinian factions, particularly within the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.?
So far, both sides have remained tight-lipped over details of the talks which are reportedly to take place at Jerusalem's prestigious King David hotel.
Chief negotiator Tzipi Livni and legal adviser Yitzhak Molcho will represent Israel, while Saeb Erakat and Mohammed Shtayyeh will speak for the Palestinians. US special envoy Martin Indyk will chair the meeting.
Israel's hawkish Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon was hard put to hide his scepticism over the talks.
"We set ourselves nine months in which to try and reach something with the Palestinians -- we've been trying for 20 years since Oslo," he said in remarks on public radio, referring to the peace accords signed between the two sides in September 1993.
"A note of scepticism might be detected in my words but we decided to give the negotiations a chance," he said.
Commentators said the timing of the settlement announcements was aimed at appeasing hardliners in the rightwing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but was also something of a quid pro quo for the release of prisoners with Israeli blood on their hands.
Additional source: AFP