Haniyeh calls on Erdogan to help release Palestinian prisoners

Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas-led Gazan administration of Palestine, has appealed to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to assist in negotiating the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Receiving a delegation from the United Cities and Local Governments of the Middle East and West Asia (UCLG-MEWA), an ?stanbul-based regional cooperation body, in Gaza on Wednesday, Haniyeh pointed to the suffering of Palestinian prisoners. He noted that the prisoners have been on a hunger strike for two weeks in protest of their plight in Israeli prisons. Turkey helped secure a Hamas-Israel deal on the release by Israel of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, signed in October, in return for the release of Gilad Shalit, a captive Israeli soldier held by Hamas. Turkey's role in the efforts to work out an agreement for the prisoner swap came despite a political crisis in its relations with Israel, sparked by a deadly takeover of a Turkish aid ship in May 2010 by Israeli commandos that resulted in the deaths of eight Turks and a Turkish American. About 40 of the prisoners were not allowed to return to their homeland upon release. They have been accepted by Turkey, Qatar, Syria and Lebanon. Regarding Turkey's contributive efforts, Israeli President Shimon Peres said in October that he was “pleasantly surprised” by Turkey's help in securing Shalit's release. "They [Turkish officials] put everything aside and favored the humanitarian side over politics,” Peres noted.