Protester at last night’s demonstration against the impending prisoner release (Flash 90)

Supreme Court Justices Miriam Naor, Edna Arbel, and Daphne Barak-Erez have rejected the petition by the Almagor organization and by the families of victims of terrorism against the release of 26 terrorists. The Court chose to allow the terrorists to go free.

The Justices stated that the government has the authority to determine the appropriateness for release of each of the prisoners, and that “it has been this way in the past and so it is in this case.”

The Court also rejected the argument that the release violates the conclusions of the 1995 Shamgar Commission. The Commission “dealt with the issue of releasing prisoners in the case of Israeli kidnappings […] not in the context of international negotiations,” the court ruled.

On the other hand, the Court also acknowledged the petitioners’ right to bring their concerns for a hearing, and ensured that “in a case of need, these issues can be raised according to the proper procedures.”

Israeli Police vehicles began to transfer 5 terrorists to the Erez crossing in Gaza before the verdict was handed down. The rest of the terrorists who are to be set free will be released to Judea and Samaria (Shomron) at midnight.

Almagor head Meir Indor has previously explained that he sees value in filing petitions against the release of terrorist killers, even knowing that the Supreme Court is unlikely to accept them. “It’s a protest and an educational effort, that makes it clear that we know what is permissible and what is not,” he stated following a similar petition in August.

This is the second round of terrorist releases out of a scheduled four. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has agreed to set free a total of 104 terrorists, many with blood on their hands, in a gesture to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon have argued that the release of terrorists is a necessary part of Israel’s long-term strategy. However, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon argues otherwise, and has warned that setting killers free will encourage terrorists and will be to Israel’s detriment in the long term.

The High Court rejected the application by the Almagor Terror Victims Association on Tuesday evening against the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners.

The prisoners are being released as part of a deal that was made in July to kick-start the peace negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

The High Court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction on the matter and that two prior applications that challenged the government’s decision were similarly rejected.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) said Tuesday “The images of the freed killers tonight will be engraved on the memories of the future generation of terrorists who will also dream of returning home as heroes.” Danon was speaking at a conference in Beit Shemesh.

Terrorist prisoner release (Flash 90)

The release of 26 terrorists from Ofer prison has already begun, despite reports that the Supreme Court is still at recess in the midst of hearings regarding its legality.

Israel’s Supreme Court convened a hearing today (Tuesday) regarding a petition from the “Almagor” organization for terrorist victims and their families against the Palestinian Arab terrorist release and have taken a recess.

The recess was called as state officials delayed a response to the justices’ queries. The Court had asked whether the terrorist release had to proceed at midnight tonight (Tuesday), or whether the state can postpone the release until the completion of proper legal proceedings. Additional inquiries were made in regard to the conclusions of the 1995 Shamgar Commission, particularly those regarding the official policy for prisoner exchanges.

The petitioners urged the court to consider that “releasing murderers with blood on their hands, even for the advancement of the State, constitutes a distinct lack of morality and is a fatal blow to a society founded on ethics and law.”

If the petition is accepted, the terrorist release of Palestinian Arab criminals from Ofer Prison to their homes scheduled for tonight will be postponed. This is the second release out of four scheduled, with a total of 104 terrorists scheduled to be returned to the Palestinian Authority.

The issue still remains undecided. Despite this, IPS vehicles are already transferring 5 terrorists to the Erez crossing into Gaza, reports say. The prisoners will be given time to prepare near the entrance to Gaza, and are scheduled to cross into the Hamas-controlled territory at midnight.

For the second time since restarting negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, Israel is in the process of releasing terrorists from its prisons.

As The AJN went to press, Jerusalem was making final preparations to release 26 prisoners held in Israeli jails. All of them committed acts of terror before the Oslo peace process began in the 1990s.

While the first release in August generated some internal tensions, the reaction on the Israeli right this time around has been much sharper, in a large part because the recent spate of terror incidents in the West Bank has increased antagonism towards Palestinians.

As well as proving divisive in the government, this week’s release generated popular protest, with almost 3000 people demonstrating against the release outside the prison where the inmates were held.

One group set up to oppose the release, which calls itself Sorry We Forgot, placed signs over graves in Israel’s most important military cemetery, on Mount Herzl. The signs, which bore a mock signature by the “government of Israel,” said: “From our perspective, your deaths were in vain.” The group claims that releasing terrorists undermines the efforts of soldiers who risked their life to arrest them.

The terrorists leaving prison include Shabir Kassem Hazem, who together with a partner killed Holocaust survivor Isaac Rothenberg with an axe 20 years ago. Ahmed Damouni murdered army reservist Amnon Pomerantz, who got lost on his way to an army base, in 1990. Another killer going free is Rahman Abdel Hajj, who murdered Genia Friedman, a woman who was out walking in Petach Tikvah in 1992.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that whatever opposition has surfaced towards the US-brokered release, it had to go ahead. “We have to honour government decisions even if it is difficult and unpleasant, we can’t constantly change our stance,” he told his cabinet.

A statement from the government stressed that it will work to ensure that the prisoners released do not reoffend, saying that “any prisoner who resumes hostile activity will be returned to serve the remainder of his sentence.” Shortly before the scheduled release, Israel’s chief negotiator Tzipi Livni claimed that it was in the “national interest” and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said that it is preferable to freezing settlement, which was an alternative concession requested by the Palestinians in the framework of the negotiations.

The Almagor organisation of terror victims’ families, asked the High Court to intervene to stop the release, claiming in a petition that freeing terrorists “strikes a fatal blow to the existence of a society founded on the values of ethics and law.” The court rejected its request.

Israeli warplanes raided the northern Gaza Strip on Monday after militants fired rockets over the border, as Israel readied to free a new batch of long-term Palestinian prisoners.

It was the first air strike on Gaza in more than two months and came shortly after two rockets were fired towards southern Israel.

Despite the flareup along the Gaza border, which has been quiet for months, Israeli officials said it was unlikely to affect the prisoner release which is due to take place on Tuesday night as part of the ongoing direct peace talks with the Palestinians.

Witnesses said the air strike targeted a training ground west of Beit Lahiya that was used by militants from the armed wing of Gaza’s ruling Hamas movement.

Hamas slammed the Israeli raid as “an escalation which aims to terrorise … our people,” adding that it held Israel “completely responsible for any effects or deterioration.”

Neither the air strike nor the earlier rocket attacks on southern Israel caused any damage or casualties.

The Israeli military said the air force had struck “two concealed rocket launchers” in northern Gaza following an earlier cross-border attack.

Earlier on Monday, militants fired two rockets at the southern Israeli port city of Ashkelon, one of which was shot down by the Iron Dome missile defence system, the army said.

And on Sunday, a mortar shell was fired over the border that also caused no damage or injuries. In September, there were two instances of rocket fire, but Israel did not respond.

It was the first Israeli air strike since August 14 when the air force hit targets in the same area, also in response to rocket fire.

That attack occurred just hours after Israel released a first batch of 26 Palestinian prisoners in line with commitments which led to a resumption of direct peace talks in late July, following months of sustained US pressure.

21 Prisoners from West Bank, Five from Gaza

But Monday’s scuffle along the Gaza border was not expected to have any impact on plans to free a second batch of prisoners, with a senior official telling AFP it “won’t delay” the release of 26 another inmates.

The list of prisoners slated for release, 21 of them from the West Bank and five from Gaza, was approved on Monday by senior Israeli ministers.

The names were published later that night, giving victims’ families and groups 48 hours to mount a legal challenge before the release goes ahead.

All but one of them were arrested before the signing of the 1993 Oslo peace accords, which won the Palestinians limited self-rule but failed to bring about an independent state.

All were convicted of murdering Israelis, according to the details published by Israel’s prison service.

A Fatah official told AFP that 19 of the prisoners set to be freed were members of its movement, which is led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, while four belong to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and three to Hamas.

Meir Indor, head of Almagor, a group representing Israeli victims of Palestinian attacks, told AFP his organisation would be petitioning the high court against the impending release.

He said the release showed “double standards” because it was a result of American and European pressure on Israel, which unlike the Jewish state, he said, “do not release terrorists.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to release a total of 104 Palestinians in four stages in line with commitments which brought about a resumption of US-brokered direct talks on July 30 after a hiatus of nearly three years.

Netanyahu reiterated on Monday at a meeting of his ruling rightwing Likud party that “we must take into account the weight of reality” and fulfill those commitments to release prisoners.

Israeli public radio also quoted International Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz as saying: “We can’t say yes to the Americans one day, and three months later say no.”

Last week, an Israeli official said that in parallel with the release, a new batch of tenders would be announced for construction in settlements in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, in a move allegedly coordinated in advance with the US and the Palestinians.

The Palestinians have denied any such link.

Outside a jail in the West Bank, some 2,000 Israelis have protested at the imminent release of 26 Palestinian prisoners.

They are the latest batch of inmates that Israel is letting go as part of US-sponsored Middle East peace talks.

Demonstrators outside the Ofer Prison near Ramallah denounced the move as an insult to victims.

“The message is not only to our government, it is also to the Europeans, to the government of the United States,” said Meir Indor, Chairman of the Almagor Terror Association in Israel. “They are asking us what they do not do there. They do not release terrorists.”

“Cruel murderers, as these ones who killed with knives and axes, belong behind bars,” said protester Lizi Hanaery. “Our government betrayed us. It is a betrayal to release such murderers.”

Friends and relatives held pictures of victims.

But the families of those being freed take a different view. For them the prisoners are heroes in a struggle for statehood.

Peace talks have showed few obvious signs of progress since they resumed in the summer.

Bereaved families held a protest rally outside the Ofer Prison on Monday night (Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel)

The government’s decision to release Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are considered “heavyweight terrorists,” has met scathing criticism from terror victims’ families.

The Almagor Terror Victims Association plans to petition the High Court of Justice on Tuesday in the hope that the court will order the government to suspend the prisoners’ release. The petition’s chances, however, are slim, as the High Court traditionally refrains from interfering with government decisions of this nature.

Monday saw members of the bereaved families hold a protest rally outside the Ofer Prison, to which the Palestinian prisoners included in the second-phase release have been transferred. Over 4,500 people attended the rally, which was organized by Almagor, joining hands and creating a human chain that surrounded much of the prison’s exterior compound.

Some protesters carried signs reading “Jewish blood is not cheap” and “Stop the prisoners’ release.” Others were carrying photos of loved ones killed in terror attacks.

Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel (Habayit Hayehudi), who attended the rally, was booed when he tried to address the crowd. After the heckling subsided, he told the families that he supported their fight.

“It is time to stop the release of terrorists. This is not Jewish ethics,” he said.

“A red line has been crossed here today,” Gila Molcho, whose brother, attorney Ian Feinberg, was murdered in Gaza in 1993, told the protesters. One of Feinberg’s killers was released as part of the Schalit deal and another is slated to be released on Tuesday night. “My brother believed in justice. He believed in people. This is a terrible injustice. How can families be trampled over like this? We are not a ‘gesture’—it’s time for the prime minister to wake up.”

“The fact that I oppose this move is insignificant,” Rivka Rotenberg, whose husband Isaac was murdered by two Palestinian terrorists 19 years ago, told Israel Hayom. “There’s nothing we can do. They should have killed them, not jailed them for 20 years only to let them go.”

Orna Amrani, whose brother, Israel Defense Forces soldier Akiva Shaltiel, was abducted and murdered in 1985, said: “They asked us what we thought [about the release] and my brother’s image immediately came to mind … I woke up this morning with a very heavy heart. We feel like we have been betrayed by the state. As far as I’m concerned, it’s like my brother was murdered a second time.”

On Monday, after receiving the final list of prisoners slated to be released, the Israel Prison Service’s Nachshon Prisoner Transports Unit transferred the 26 prisoners in question to Ofer Prison, where they underwent the routine identification verification and medical examination process.

The prisoners also signed a legal document stipulating that they would abandon all terror-related activities as a condition of their release. They are scheduled to leave the prison late Tuesday night under heavy guard, as 21 of them will be shuttled to the Bitunia checkpoint and will return to the West Bank, while the remaining five will return to the Gaza Strip via the Erez crossing.

Palestinian Prisoner Affairs Minister Issa Qaraqe said the prisoner release was giving people hope.

“I think that releasing prisoners deepens the peace process, and gives it credibility and also gives hope that all Palestinian prisoners could be released,” Qaraqe said.

Families of Palestinian prisoners set to be released were preparing Monday for homecoming celebrations.

The prisoners returning to the West Bank will be met with an official reception at the Mukataa in Ramallah, where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to greet them personally.

In Gaza, meanwhile, Hamas is said to be downplaying the release, and no official celebrations are planned.

Protest against terrorist release (Miri Tzachi)

Dozens of buses from all over Israel are to bring protesters to a planned large-scale demonstration Monday evening, against the release of terrorist murderers scheduled for Tuesday. The protest will take place outside Ofer Prison, north of Jerusalem, where the terrorists selected for release to Judea and Samaria are being gathered ahead of their bus ride to freedom.

The rally is being organized by My Israel – a grassroots group founded by Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) head Naftali Bennett before he joined party politics – the Almagor terror victims’ group and other organizations.

Relatives of terror victims, MKs and other public figures are expected to take part in the rally.

The protesters will form a human chain outside the gates to the jail, and demand that the prisoner release be halted. They will hold up signs with images of bloody hands, and red glow sticks.

The protesters will hold photos of the victims whose murderers are being released, and films about bereaved families will be shown.

The list of terrorists to be released and their crimes has been made public, drawing widespread revulsion and reigniting popular anger at what is seen by most Israelis as a betrayal of justice.

Israel announced Monday that it will free 26 more Palestinian prisoners convicted of killing Israelis, saying it was fulfilling its commitment to U.S. diplomats as part of ongoing peace negotiations, despite intense opposition within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.

Netanyahu agreed months ago to free 104 Palestinian militants as part of a deal brokered by Secretary of State John F. Kerry to get the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, to the negotiating table. Many of the prisoners were serving life sentences for killing Israeli civilians in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The first group of 26 prisoners was released in August, triggering an emotional outpouring among the families of those they had killed.

All the Palestinians slated to be freed this week were convicted of killing Israelis and have spent 19 to 28 years in Israeli prisons. The majority are from the West Bank. Five are from the Gaza Strip, governed by the Islamist group Hamas, which does not recognize Israel.

Among the prisoners who will be freed is Omar Issa Masoud, convicted of murdering Ian Feinberg, a lawyer who had been working in Gaza to help improve the economic conditions of Palestinians. Feinberg, 30, was slain in April 1993, when gunmen stormed an aid meeting in Gaza City that he was attending.

Another prisoner on the list is Hazem Kassem Shbair, convicted of murdering Holocaust survivor Isaac Rotenberg at a construction site where the two worked together. The Almagor Terror Victims Association in Israel said that most of Rotenberg’s family had been killed during World War II but that he managed to escape, arriving in Israel in 1947. Rotenberg was bludgeoned to death with an ax in 1994, when he was 67.

Parliament member David Tsur of the left-leaning Hatnua party told Ynetnews.com that he considered the release of such prisoners “improper conduct” and would have preferred that the government instead offer the Palestinians the carrot of halting settlement construction in the West Bank. “Releasing terrorists is irreversible,” Tsur said.

Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the right-wing Jewish Home party and the third most powerful member of Netanyahu’s government, tried to stop the prisoner release, saying it was “a dubious privilege” to have Israeli negotiators sit with their Palestinian counterparts.

But Netanyahu said the government must abide by its commitments. “The decision to free prisoners is one of the most difficult I made as prime minister,” he said, according to accounts in the Israeli news media. “This decision was necessary in our current reality. We have to navigate through a complex international arena full of challenges.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is planning to welcome the freed prisoners in a celebration in Ramallah late Tuesday, officials said.

Critics of the release were given fresh ammunition after two missiles were fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel early Monday. No one asserted responsibility, and no one was injured. One missile was intercepted by Israel’s U.S.-funded Iron Dome missile defense system above the coastal city of Ashkelon. The other rocket landed in an uninhabited patch of land nearby.

The Israeli air force retaliated with an attack on two clandestine rocket launchpads north of Gaza City.

Hard-line Israeli politicians opposed to the prisoner release — and to negotiations that would give away land for a future Palestinian state — said the rocket fire showed that there was no trustworthy partner for peace on the Palestinian side.

Parliament member Miri Regev of Netanyahu’s Likud party said that in return for releasing prisoners, Israel sees “rocket fire, murder and terror.”

On Sunday, two mortar rounds were fired at Israel from Gaza. And earlier this month, Israel’s military shut down a “terror tunnel” that led from the Palestinian territory into the Jewish state.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said the tunnel was designed to facilitate attacks on Israel, such as the kidnapping of Israeli troops, the planting of explosive devices or the moving of militants across the border.

Israel’s decision to strike the concealed rocket-launch sites Monday “shows our capability and our knowledge,” Lerner said, and puts Hamas on notice about Israel’s intent to respond to any provocations with force.

Matthew Levitt, a scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Hamas and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, said Israel usually holds Hamas responsible for rockets fired from Gaza and described a retaliatory strike as “par for the course.”

Israeli aircraft pounded rocket-­launch sites in response to rocket fire Aug. 14, Israeli officials said, and hit targets in Gaza on June 24, April 28 and April 3.

“The real question,” Levitt said, is why the rockets continue to be fired from Gaza, despite the relative calm in the area. He said the answer might be linked to Gaza’s increasing isolation, after the ouster of the Islamist government of President Mohamed Morsi in neighboring Egypt.

Since removing Morsi in a coup, Egypt’s military has destroyed or sealed most of the smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza and has repeatedly shut down a pedestrian crossing into Gaza at Rafah.

Those moves denied Hamas its “tax revenue” from the tunnels, further battered the weak Gazan economy and effectively sealed off the coastal enclave.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Sunday, October 27, 2013 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/pool/Flash90)

The Israel Prison Service published the names late Sunday night of 26 Palestinian prisoners set to be released over the next 48 hours as part of a deal to keep the US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on course. All are convicted murderers.

Six of the inmates have been imprisoned for just under 30 years, one of whom was due to be released in four years. All were imprisoned for murders committed before the signing of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords. A government statement said earlier that 21 of the inmates were from the West Bank and five were from the Gaza Strip.

Among the prisoners to go free is Damouni Saad Mohammed Ahmed, who was convicted in the 1990 lynch of IDF reservist Amnon Pomerantz in the Gaza Strip; Pomerantz’s car was set on fire while he was inside. The other convicted murderer of Pomerantz is not among those set to be released.

In a list of Pre-Oslo prisoners released by the Almagor Terror Victims Association, it is noted that Ahmed “did not express regret for his acts.”

Gila Molcho, center, holds a picture of her brother Ian Feinberg, who was killed in 1993 in Gaza, at a demonstration against the release of Palestinian prisoners outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on August 11, 2013. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The killer behind the 1993 murder of South-African-born Ian Feinberg, a 30-year-old lawyer and activist working with Palestinians in Gaza, will also be set free. Masoud Issa Rajeb Amer, a member of the PFLP, was sentenced to three life sentences for the killing, which was perpetrated with a hatchet. On April 18, 1993, Feinberg participated in a meeting in the Gaza offices of a European-funded NGO involved in aid projects when terrorists burst in, ordered everyone, except Feinberg, to the floor, and proceeded to kill him.

Massalha Awwad Mohammed Yusuf and Amawi Hamed Alabad Halmi, both Hamas members who killed 22-year-old Yigal Vaknin in 1993, are also on the list. Vaknin was lured with a plea for help and stabbed to death. His body was found in a field near his home in Moshav Bazra in the Sharon region, two hours before the start on Yom Kippur that year. Yusuf was originally sentenced to two life terms for the killing.

Also included is Haga Salim Mahmud Mo’id who in May 1992 swam from Aqaba, Jordan to Eilat along with three other terrorists and shot 62-year-old Yosef Shirazi to death. Various weapons were found on Mo’id which led authorities to believe they planned a much larger attack.

Relatives of Israelis killed in terror attacks holding signs as they demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on August 11, 2013. (Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The planned release constitutes the second phase of a four-stage prisoner release deal, agreed to as part of the talks which restarted in July. Israel released a first group of prisoners in August.

Earlier Sunday, a ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved on the names of those Palestinians set to go free on Tuesday.

“A list of the prisoners is to be published Sunday night on the website of the Israel Prisons Service, after the bereaved families have been informed,” the statement said.

The releases were expected to be accompanied by the announcement of new plans for West Bank settlement construction, a senior Israeli official said.

The religious, nationalist Jewish Home party has bitterly attacked the planned prisoner releases in recent days. On Sunday, the party proposed legislation to prevent future releases. Opposed by Netanyahu, the bill was rejected by the Ministerial Committee for Legislation in an 8–5 vote.

The Jewish Home’s decision to push forward with the bill drew harsh criticism from Likud ministers and other coalition partners.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua), who is heading off negotiations with the Palestinians, criticized Jewish Home and said that the committee vote showed which coalition parties truly had the nation’s needs at heart.

“Today it has once again been made clear that the government, in contrast to one of its member parties, is acting in the national interest and not according to the instructions of the rabbis in the West Bank,” she said.

Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar (Likud) denounced the Jewish Home ministers for failing to toe the government line.

“You are responsible just like all the other members of the government,” he said to Pensioners Minister Uri Orbach (Jewish Home). “If you don’t like it, you can resign.”

Although the prisoner release deal was approved by Netanyahu, Jewish Home, led by Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, blamed Livni for it.

MK Ayelet Shaked of Jewish Home told Channel 2 Saturday that Jewish Home had made its opposition clear to Netanyahu. ”We told the prime minister that we are against the release of terrorists. It’s immoral. No other country in the world does it,” she said.

Jewish Home also made plain it was not appeased by news of further homes to be built in the settlements. In a statement on Thursday, the party said that “the attempt to link the release of the murderers to construction tenders is manipulative and morally wrong. It will be better if the prime minister does not release murderers and does not build. This looks like a despicable attempt to free murderers and tarnish the settlement enterprise.”

Hatnua’s Environment Minister Amir Peretz said earlier Sunday that Jewish Home could have prevented the release by agreeing to a halt in settlement building, but is instead trying to paper over its own involvement in the government move.

“What is happening in front of our eyes is the biggest dance of hypocrisy I’ve ever seen by a party,” Peretz, a former defense minister, told Army Radio. “On the one hand it sits within the government, and on the other hand it takes advantage of the convenience of being in the government to fulfill its objectives; participates in the vote on the prisoner release, and prevents any way of discussing another option.”

A senior Israeli official said the Americans and Palestinians were aware of Israel’s intentions to build more settlement homes, which had been made clear before talks resumed. The official said that any new construction would take place inside the major blocs Israel aims to keep in any future peace deal. In previous rounds of negotiations, the Palestinians agreed in principle to swap some West Bank land for Israeli territory to allow Israel to annex some settled areas adjacent to the 1967 lines.

Netanyahu has faced pressure from hawkish ministers to delay or cancel the prisoner releases in the wake of a series of violent incidents in the West Bank in recent weeks, including the killing of two IDF soldiers and an attack that wounded a 9-year-old girl in the settlement of Psagot.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) also slammed the planned prisoner release, saying it only strengthened terror. ”We’ll see the celebrations in Gaza, in Ramallah, in Nablus. This only strengthens those who seek to harm [us],” he told Army Radio Saturday. ”Any approval of settlement construction should not be linked to these releases,” he added.

Mahmoud Abbas celebrating the return of Palestinian prisoners in August. (photo credit: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

Netanyahu has resisted the pressure from the right and plans to release the prisoners on schedule, the prime minister’s representative in the peace talks, attorney Yitzhak Molcho, assured Palestinian and American officials in recent days.

In July, Israel agreed to the four-phase release of 104 prisoners, many of whom were convicted of brutal murders, serving sentences for acts of terror committed before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Twenty-six prisoners were released in the first wave on August 13, just after talks started.

The deal was intended as a sign of good faith ahead of the renewed American-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestinians after their release from Israeli prisons [archive] (Photo credit: Lior Mizrahi)

Senior Palestinian sources in Ramallah on Sunday told Israel Hayom that the second wave of Palestinian prisoner releases will be carried out as planned this Tuesday. A senior official in Ramallah told Israel Hayom that they had not yet received the list of prisoners from Israel and that the identities of the prisoners to be released are as yet unclear. He said that in any case it will be a subset of 26 prisoners from among the 104 prisoners jailed in Israeli prisons prior to the signing of the Oslo accords in 1994.

According to the senior Palestinian Authority official, almost all the prisoners to be released in the second round were convicted of murder, aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter out of nationalistic motives.

“The list will include prisoners defined in Israel as ‘prisoners with blood on their hands,’ but the list will contain only Palestinian prisoners who are residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and not Israeli Arabs or residents of east Jerusalem.”

The senior Palestinian official also said that as part of the memorandum of understanding signed by the sides prior to the start of negotiations, Israel would have the right to decide which of the released prisoners could return to his home in the West Bank and which West Bank residents would be banished to the Gaza Strip based on the demands of the Israeli defense establishment. The defense establishment will decide which are the most dangerous prisoners in terms of the likelihood that if allowed to return to the West Bank, they would re-establish terror cells and terror infrastructure there.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the expected release of terrorists this week, there has been a severe conflict between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett.

The arena of the conflict is mainly in the ministerial committee on legislation, which will convene on Sunday to discuss a proposed law that Bennett is promoting and whose purpose is to prevent large-scale releases of prisoners in the future.

Netanyahu opposes the law, claiming that it limits the maneuvering room of the diplomatic echelon, and at this stage it is unclear whether it will gain enough support to pass, because the result depends on the vote of several Likud ministers who are under pressure to oppose the bill. Foremost among these ministers are Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat.

Last week, incidentally, a decision passed the ministerial committee for legislation not to allow negotiations over dividing Jerusalem without the support of 80 Knesset members.

In the proposed Basic Law: The President of the State, Amendment: Prisoner Releases, which was proposed by MK Orit Struck (Habayit Hayehudi) and supported by Likud MKs and also signed by Coalition Chairman MK Yariv Levin, it is explained that “any government decision to release terrorists as part of what is called a ‘diplomatic gesture’ empties of all content the president’s authority to use his personal judgment regarding the granting of a pardon to individual terrorists in question.”

In tandem with the fight over the proposed law, Habayit Hayehudi and parts of Likud-Beytenu continue their efforts to halt the government’s decision about three months ago to release 104 terrorists as part of the agreement to conduct negotiations with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

At the time, the government decided that the terrorists would be released in four rounds over a period of nine months, in parallel with progress in the negotiations.

This coming Thursday, the second wave of 26 prisoners is expected to be released. The prime minister’s attempt to soften the release by promoting building in the settlements — encountered resistance and a direct attack by Habayit Hayehudi on Netanyahu and on the person described as his “partner,” Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who is leading the negotiations with the Palestinians on the government’s behalf.

The chairwoman of the ministerial committee on legislation, Livni, does not intend to bring to a vote on Sunday Habayit Hayehudi’s proposed legislation to prevent the release of terrorists.

Her associates say that the matter only came up on Friday and has not yet been studied by professionals and that a final decision will be made this morning. In Habayit Hayehudi they are criticizing Livni and saying that talks with Saeb Erekat are not a good reason to release murderers, or to delay the proposed law preventing the release of prisoners.

“The release of prisoners in exchange for the dubious right of Tzipi Livni to meet with Saeb Erekat is most terrible. With all due respect, halting the release of murderers is even more important than justifying Livni’s being in the government,” said the statement.

Associates of Livni said over the weekend that “Habayit Hayehudi prefers building in the settlements over any other Israeli national or security interest. We will continue to lead the negotiations in coordination with the prime minister.”

The prime minister and his office did not address the subject at the end of the week, and government ministers, including Bennett, refrained from addressing the issue publicly and left the arena to MKs from their parties. The deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, MK Ofir Akunis (Likud), said that “releasing the prisoners is a step that is immoral, goes against security and does not advance peace. Since the previous release, the number of terror attacks has only increased.”

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) called on the cabinet ministers to halt the release of prisoners. “Any other decision gives a tailwind to terrorism.”

In Habayit Hayehudi, the attack is harsher and MK Ayelet Shaked said that “releasing prisoners in exchange for negotiations is a moral injustice and a diplomatic injustice. There is no connection between construction and prisoner release.”

Another member of her party, MK Yoni Chetboun said, “It’s better for Tzipi Livini to be outside the coalition than a danger to the security of Israeli citizens. At the same time, the Palestinian Authority is adamantly denying reports that as part of the second wave of prisoner releases, Jerusalem and Ramallah have reached an understanding regarding the continued Israeli building in the settlements.”

PLO Executive Committee Secretary Yasser Abed Rabbo said, “There haven’t been and there won’t be such understandings and if Mahmoud Abbas knew that Israel would connect these two things, we would not have returned to the negotiating table.”

“Terrorists’ Bodies Will Not Be Returned to the PA”

Israel’s diplomatic echelon is denying reports disseminated of late by the Palestinians, to the effect that Israel will also transfer to the PA bodies of terrorists as part of the waves of prisoner release.

According to a senior diplomatic source, Israel clarified to the PA that returning the bodies of terrorists is done in coordination with their families and not with any particular organization. “Israel’s message was loud and clear, there will be no commerce in bodies.”

Habayit Hayehudi’s reaction also stated that democracy also requires bringing to a vote laws that Livni does not necessarily agree with. Close associates of the justice minister accused the party and its chairman, Naftali Bennett, of incitement.

The ministerial committee for Palestinian prisoner release headed by Netanyahu is expected to convene Sunday evening to discuss the list of prisoners expected to be released in the second round.

Over the weekend, Habayit Hayehudi released a statement in which it accused Livni of pushing Netanyahu to hold negotiations with the Palestinians, and that it is due to her that murderous prisoners are being released.

On the other hand, Hatnuah says that the entire government decided on the release of murderers, first and foremost Netanyahu. “The people who caused the release of prisoners is Habayit Hayehudi,” MK Meir Sheetrit (Hatnuah) told Army Radio, “Their demands from the prime minister were dogged day after day. They pressured the prime minister not to freeze settlement construction and to release prisoners. And it’s clear that the opposite was the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Minister Amir Peretz from Hatnuah warns that “incitement,” as he calls it, of Habayit Hayehudi towards Livni and Hatnuah could lead to disaster. What starts with spitting, he said, could lead to murder. He was responding to the arrest last week of a 17-year-old youth from a moshav in the north on suspicions that he spat on MK Elazar Stern from Hatnuah. According to Peretz, the members of Habayit Hayehudi are acting hypocritically.

“On the one hand they enjoy the perks of being in the government and on the other hand, attack the government over the decision to release prisoners, when they themselves participated in the vote,” Peretz said.

He also said it would have been possible to avoid the release of prisoners if Habayit Hayehudi had agreed to freeze settlement construction during the negotiations.

MK Ayelet Shaked responded that Peretz was lying because the spitting incident against Stern was not out of diplomatic motives. She also said that the possibility never came up to freeze construction in Judea and Samaria in place of releasing Palestinian prisoners. She added that nothing would come out of the diplomatic negotiations except for the release of prisoners.

Families of terror victims protest outside the Supreme Court in August (Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel)

Meanwhile, a protest is planned for Monday evening at the Ofer prison, from where the Palestinian prisoners will be released. Posters for the demonstration call on participants to form a “human chain” around the prison, to “stop the release of terrorists.” The protest is organized by Almagor, the terror victims’ association, the Likud young leadership division, the young leadership of Habayit Hayehudi, and the nationalist faction of the Likud, and posters advertise the participation of “bereaved families and government ministers.”

Government to announce building projects in the West Bank next week [Illustrative] (Photo credit: AFP)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not intend to abort the second phase of the prisoner release which he pledged within the framework of resuming direct peace talks with the Palestinians, but he also intends to accelerate certain building projects in Judea and Samaria.

Netanyahu was planning to divulge the identities of the 32 convicted terrorists comprising the second batch of Palestinian prisoners during the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday.

Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office did not reveal which building projects were to be greenlighted, the number of housing units in question, or which programs the government would seek to advance in order to ease pressure on Netanyahu for his decision to fulfill his obligation and release the convicted terrorists.

A senior political official said on Thursday that “Israel will stand behind all its obligations with the resumption of negotiations. At the same time a new construction initiative is expected to be announced.”

The Prime Minister’s Office denied reports that Israel was going to return the bodies of terrorists in the current phase.

An unnamed official told Reuters that “both the Americans and the Palestinians have been aware of these understandings.” There was no immediate comment from either of those parties.

According to the Associated Press, an unnamed Israeli official said that any new construction would take place inside the major settlement blocs that Israel would likely keep in a future peace deal.

The announcement came a day after Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met in Rome, where the Israeli-Palestinian talks were on the agenda.

Meanwhile, dissension within the government has grown over the second phase of the prisoner release. Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) criticized the prime minister’s willingness to release terrorists, despite Netanyahu’s pledge to keep building in the settlements, the support center of Bennett’s party.

“The attempt to combine construction with freeing murderers is cynical and morally wrong. It would be better for the prime minister not to free murderers and not to build,” he said.

Habayit Hayehudi announced on Thursday it planned to propose a bill on Sunday that would prevent future prisoner releases.

The new bill “would stop the shameful release of terrorist prisoners in the future and we even expect Likud ministers to support [it],” said Habayit Heyehudi in a press release. The bill has also received signatures from MKs in Netanyahu’s Likud party and United Torah Judaism.

Earlier this week, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, also a Likud member, said the government would not backtrack on the prisoner release. He said the recent wave of violence sweeping the West Bank—including terrorist attacks that resulted in the deaths of two soldiers and one former colonel—would also have no effect on government plans.

The forum of bereaved families and the Almagor Terror Victims Association—which protested the deal from the outset—released a candid letter highlighting the recent spate of West Bank violence and demanding deliberations over the upcoming prisoner release.

“The reality in the [Palestinian] territories shows that terror is only intensifying and making progress, exacting the heavy price of Israeli victims. Seven ministers have already demanded renewed deliberations, and they are: Yisrael Katz, Naftali Bennett, Uri Ariel, Uri Orbach, Uzi Landau, Sofa Landver and Yair Shamir. We ask you to intervene and request that the prime minister hold renewed discussions on the matter of freeing murderers.”

The groups were also planning a demonstration near the Ofer prison just outside of Ramallah, calling on the government to “stop the release of terrorists.”

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon—a vociferous opponent to any peace deal with the Palestinian Authority at the present time—wrote a letter to several ministers on Thursday asking for opposition to the plan.

“I am calling on you to oppose the irresponsible release of terrorists, which jeopardizes the security of Israelis. Releasing terrorists without conditions constitutes a prize for terrorism and encourages future terrorists,” the letter read.

The non-governmental organization which advocates on behalf of bereaved kin who lost loved ones in terrorist attacks demanded on Thursday that the ombudsman and the attorney general order the government to reconsider the release of Palestinian terrorists just a week before 30 more are due to be freed.

The Israeli government approved the release of over 100 Palestinians as a gesture to PA chief Mahmoud Abbas just prior to the re-launch of peace negotiations.

According to Israel Radio, the organization, Almagor, is arguing that the recent spike in terrorist incidents in the West Bank mandates a reconsideration of the controversial decision to release the Palestinian convicts.

Terrorist with knife—illustration (Flash 90)

Israel’s security apparatus is trying to downplay the Saturday night attack in Psagot in which an Arab man stabbed a young girl, warns Dr. Aryeh Bachrach, a current events analyst and head of the Almagor Bereaved Parents’ Forum.

Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Bachrach noted that from the beginning of the week, security personnel have been saying that the stabbing of nine-year-old Noam Glick may occurred in the course of an attempted robbery, rather than as part of a planned terrorist attack.

“Someone is trying to spread the sense that everything is OK, that there is no deterioration in security and that we can continue the negotiations [with the Palestinian Authority],” he said.

However, the act of stabbing itself proves terrorist intent, he argued. “To stand next to a nine-year-old girl and shoot or stab her—only an Arab or a Nazi could do that,” he declared.

“It’s reminiscent of the murder of Shalhevet Pass, or of what happened with the Fogel family, when a terrorist went back into the home in order to murder one more little girl [3-month-old Hadas Fogel—ed.] who they hadn’t managed to kill earlier,” Bachrach said.

Arab terrorists are the ones who hurt Arab children, too, he added. “Only an Arab could hide behind little children and shoot at IDF soldiers… No soldier could intentionally hurt children,” he argued.

The attacker in Psagot targeted 9-year-old Noam as she played on the balcony of her family home. According to initial reports he shot her in the neck, although later reports said she had been stabbed.

Noam was badly injured in the attack, but made a rapid recovery, and was able to return home earlier this week.

Previous demonstration by victims’ families (Flash 90)

Several dozen people on Monday protested outside Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, demanding that the government promise to stop freeing terrorists in swap deals or as part of “gestures” to the Palestinian Authority. The protest included many members of families who have lost loved ones in terror attacks. It was organized by the Almagor terror victims’ group and the Israel Sheli (My Israel) organization.

Protesters carried pictures of the victims of terrorist attacks committed Arab terrorists. Many of those victims were killed, directly and indirectly, by the terrorists the government promised to free in order to restart talks with the PA. Some 100 terrorists who have been in prison for years are set to be freed in several groups. Most have not yet been released, however, and the protesters are demanding that they remain in prison, after the murders of two IDF soldiers in the past several days.

“We are protesting the absurd situation in which the government is set to release terrorists, ignoring the fact that two soldiers have been killed,” said Sara Ha’etzni Hacohen, head of Israel Sheli. “What kind of message does this give to the terrorists? That they can keep killing us and still go free? What about the newest terrorists who will be arrested – those who killed the soldiers this weekend? Will they too go free in the future?”

Speaking to the protesters, Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely said that she and many other MKs and government officials were determined to stop the releases.

“The call to end this is coming from all segments of the Likud and the nation, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is obligated to listen,” she said.

On Thursday evening September 19th a special Yom Kippur War memorial will take place at the Nitzanim Synagogue in Jerusalem. The event is being organized by Meir Indor, head of the Almagor Terrorism Victims association. Indor is a veteran of the war which took place in 1973 and lasted into the Sukkot holiday. Zionist poetry will be recited as well and songs from the Modzitz and Carlebach tradition. Indor stated, “it will be an evening of heroism, poetry, empowerment and thanksgiving.” A similar event is planned for Saturday in Kfar Etzion.

Child weeps at funeral of Arab-terror victims (file) (Flash 90)

On Wednesday, Arutz Sheva published an interview with Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords process, who argued that the accords did not cause the wave of deadly terrorism that hit Israel shortly afterward.

His argument aroused many responses. Among those who responded was Meir Indor, head of the Almagor group for victims of terrorism, who rebutted Hirschfeld’s claims with a detailed analysis of how, exactly, the Oslo process caused terrorism.

Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Indor slammed Hirschfeld’s claims as misleading, but added that he believes Hirschfeld believes what he is saying. “There are dreamers. They aren’t bad people at heart, but when a person is locked in to a certain concept, he comes to accept evil,” he said.

What particularly angered Indor was Hirschfeld’s argument that two murders carried out by Jews – Baruch Goldstein’s shooting targeting Muslim worshipers in Hevron and the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin – were among the true causes of the “Intifada” violence.

“If he’s blaming murders by Palestinians on the Jewish people, that’s borderline evil,” Indor accused.

In fact, he said, the Oslo Accords led directly to terrorism.

The first issue was transferring control over security, including counter-terror operations, to the hands of the Palestinian Authority, he said. While there was a precedent of sorts – Israel had transferred much of the responsibility for security in southern Lebanon to the South Lebanon Army – the situation with the PA was different, because it gave the PA far more autonomy than the SLA had, he said.

The fact that the PA army was primarily Muslim while the SLA was Christian was also a factor, he said.

“How can you put foreign, hostile armed forces in the tiny space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and allow it to bring in weapons and to train some 13,000 officers? We built this monster with our own hands,” Indor said.

The PA “security control” not only did not slow terrorism, but had the opposite effect, he noted – more than three times as many Israelis were murdered by terrorists after the Oslo Accords as were killed in the “First Intifada” wave of terrorism, when the IDF still patrolled the entirety of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Indor listed the factors that led to terrorism. “Transferring the territory – not letting the IDF be there to capture terrorists and gather information. Giving weapons – of course there were already weapons there, but not on remotely the same scale. When you saturate the area with weapons, it’s enough that just ten percent go to terrorism…

“Removing the fear of legal consequences – the IDF let Palestinian commanders in at the border. [IDF] officers who saw the process called it an outrage, saying, ‘how can it be that after we caught the terrorists, they bring in new terrorists?’… Terrorists planning attacks knew the authorities would ignore them, and if they were caught, at worst, they would be tried and the ‘revolving door’ would go into effect.

“This weakness led to a jump in the number of terrorist attacks,” Indor concluded.

“Many believed in this peace, went out to tour the area believing peace had come, and were murdered,” he mourned.

One example of a direct link between Oslo and terrorism was the Israeli army’s withdrawal from Bethlehem, which led to daily gunfire on the nearby Israeli neighborhood of Gilo, Indor continued.

The turning point in fighting terrorism was the “Defensive Shield” operation, which began after the Park Hotel massacre, and which included IDF operations in the heart of PA-controlled Arab cities. That operation showed how far the situation had deteriorated since before the Oslo Accords, Indor said.

Those who masterminded the attacks were “Hirschfeld’s friends,” he said, naming Jibril Rajoub and Marwan Barghouti in particular as senior PA leaders formerly beloved of the “peace camp” who were deeply involved in terrorism.

Indor also responded to the argument that the PA is in the process of creating a de-facto state already. Under a PA autonomy similar to a state, the IDF can still fight terrorism in PA areas when necessary, he said, but if the PA officially establishes a new Arab state of “Palestine,” it can turn to the UN and ensure that the IDF has no ability to operate against terrorism within its borders.

We lost the latest round of the war on terror.

It was on Independence Day that we first learned of the tunnel being dug underneath the prison walls, ready for the escape of 120 terrorists. President Peres, during an interview on Channel 1, was asked whether he thought it appropriate, in exchange for negotiations, to accede to the Palestinians’ demand to free murderers. He answered affirmatively, and it became instantly clear that we had a problem.

A month earlier, the Palestinians had begun appearing in the Israeli media to sound off their demand to release the pre-Oslo prisoners. After all, they explained, these people are old already.

Anyone who saw the footage of the terrorists who were released this week knows very well that this was cheap propaganda. The receptions held for the freed prisoners featured forty-year-old murderers who wouldn’t have any difficulty returning to terrorism, or at least recruiting the next generation. That’s the business on which another “old” person, Samir Quntar, recently visited Gaza. As long as these people were in jail, the terrorists organizations didn’t have enough professional manpower for organization and recruitment.

Following the interview, our bereaved families began looking into the matter, but a decoy was quickly dispatched to distract us, with MK Ofir Akunis appearing in the Knesset to announce that there was no plan to free terrorists.

Today Akunis says he was misled. But that doesn’t stop him from defending the man who sent him—Benjamin Netanyahu.

And what of Netanyahu? He fell under the pressure coming from Kerry.

But then why did he send Akunis to make that announcement? Why not accept pressure from the right too?

Whatever the case, in the end Netanyahu buckled and paid out, as usual. To be sure, this was not a precondition. This was advance payment.

The Security Cabinet did everything in its power to make good on the first 26-murderer installment during the long night before talks began. At midnight I received a call from senior figures at the Justice Ministry with a request that I forward to the families with whom we had filed our petition the message that the cabinet had reached the “disappointing” decision to release their loved ones’ murderers. My interlocutors wanted to send me the list of of victims per murderer.

I refused.

“Tell the ministers,” I said, “that we’ll do it in the morning.”

“But the information is about to be released,” they said. “It wouldn’t do for them to hear about it from the media.”

“Then delay the announcement.”

I requested. I demanded. But I didn’t realize what was the ministers’ “problem”: the requirement that a release take place no less than 48 hours after the announcement. And if they made the announcement any later, the Palestinians wouldn’t receive the payment on time and the talks would be delayed by a few hours.

In brief, Minister Livni, who had received my message, decided to reject our request. The bereaved parents were to have another sleepless night.

They have plenty of sleepless nights as it is.

Not Listening

Then there’s another person who works for the Palestinians. This one sits on the Supreme Court. When Abbas and Kerry pressure Netanyahu, they know that at the critical moment, the court will come to their rescuse and refuse to interfere with letting out the murderers.

Murders committed? Sentences handed down by courts? You wouldn’t know it.

Without a doubt, all the legal authorities are dominated by political interests. And yet this time we held out hope that the court would intervene, because this time all the red lines were to be violated. For the first time ever, payment was being made before negotiations even had begun. Murderers were being released as a gesture—another first. And even so, the judges were not bothered.

Who, then, is not eligible for special treatment? The bereaved parents, of course. When I asked His Honor Justice Grunis to hear out the bereaved families, he refused—unlike his predecessors, who had big enough hearts to listen to the families at just such difficult times.

Then came the outburst by Miriam Tobul and Dr. Gila Molcho.

Miriam and her husband, whose son was murdered, once spent Shabbat with me across from the Prime Minister’s Office, back in the Rabin days, demonstrating for a harder line on terrorism. Rabin let us in twice and heard her out.

Grunis did not care to listen. He did not understand that standing in front of him was a mother fighting to keep her son’s memory alive.

Miriam’s screams echoed throughout the media alongside the screams and dripping tears coming from Gila.

Gila lost her brother, Ian Feinberg. Ian, with his faith in the goodness of people, had served in the JAG Corps in Gaza. After the Oslo Accords broke out, he was sent by the European Union to help the Palestinians set up a system of taxation there.

It didn’t help. The EU-hired guards murdered him. And now Abbas has no problem demanding their release. After all, he was a Jew. He was worthy of death.

The EU, Kerry, and the Government of Israel also don’t have any problem with that. The scum have returned home.

“What message is the Israeli government sending here?” Gila screamed, crying, standing there alongside her family members, all of them Zionists who made aliya from South Africa.

In the end, Grunis gave a signal, and the guards removed the bereaved families from the courtroom.

When I read the verdict, I finally understood: the Israeli Supreme Court has accepted the idea that the Palestinians have been pushing: murdering Jews is okay as long as it’s done in the service of the goals of Palestinian terrorism. Then it stops being a concern of the court and becomes merely a political issue.

The court could easily have put an end to this judicial farce and the creeping erosion of the rule of law: “There are judges in Jerusalem, and jailed terrorists are off-limits to political negotiations.” The court could have explained that, in the name of justice, it could not allow this to happen.

But the judges suddenly turned humble. Aside from a few words of condolences to the families, the injured victims and mourning families were sent home, knowing that the murders were headed home to festive receptions, while their victims remained under the ground.

Legalisms to the Rescue

Just a few hours before the terrorists were released, we thought we were saved. It turned out that eight of the murderers had committed murders after the Oslo Accord, and therefore did not satisfy the criteria set and discussed by the government. For Palestinians who see terrorism and murder as part of a legitimate struggle, the Oslo Accord is to supposed to represent the date when the fighters laid down their weapons, and those already jailed should be freed.

Rabin, though, did not see fit to free them, despite signing the Oslo Accord, because they had blood on their hands. Rabin had been around for the Jibril Deal, the traumatic release of murderers in exchange for three IDF forces that he had seen through along with Peres and Shamir. Rabin had seen how those freed had led the First Intifada, and he had no interest in repeating the mistake.

Bibi, though, was convinced by Kerry and Abbas to do just that.

Journalist Hagai Segal discovered that Chaim “Chaimu” Mizrachi, a Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer player who became religious and moved to Bet El, was murdered a month-and-a-half after the accord had been signed. Other Jews also had been murdered after the Oslo Accord, and their murderers also wanted to take part in the festivities.

Take the murderers of Isaac Rotenberg, a Holocaust survivor who worked as a plasterer and manual laborer and was murdered with axes by laborers who worked in his building. Take the murderers of Moshe Becker, who made aliya from Europe and was murdered in his orchard.

Segal sent us the document he was using to date the signing of the Oslo Accord: a notebook of government protocols that recorded that day as 9 September 1993.

In their verdict, the judges who had put away Mizrachi’s murderers had made their own note of that date: “This abominable murder took place just one-and-a-half months after the signing of the Declaration of Principles, which was supposed to herald a new age for Jewish-Arab relations in the Middle East …”

Still, I thought, maybe the idea of releasing only pre-Oslo terrorists hadn’t been discussed with the cabinet ministers, but only broadcast and disseminated to the media?

I called Minister Uri Ariel. He confirmed that at the cabinet meeting, the topic at hand had been the release of pre-Oslo terrorists only.

The families appealed once again to the Supreme Court. But the terrorists were saved by cabinet secretary Avichai Mandelblit, formerly the chief military advocate general of the IDF. He counts from the same date as the PA, namely the date on which the Oslo Accord came into force.

Up until that date, it was okay to murder. Granted, there had been a ceremony in Washington. Granted, there had been letters exchanged between Rabin and Arafat to the effect that there would be no more violence. But the date that appeared in the government protocol was significant neither for the murderers and their organizations nor for our legal commentators.

At the end of the day, Netanyahu and Mandelblit have some questions to answer:

What is the meaning of this burst of generosity, of giving the Palestinians whatever they demand? What is this unbearable flippancy with which you relate to the memory of victims whose murderers don’t even reflect the spirit of the agreement with the Palestinians? Why are you looking for excuses to release them, insead of doing the opposite?

First published in Makor Rishon (print edition)
Translated from Hebrew by David B. Greenberg

Anders Behring Breivik (Reuters)

Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Isaac Bachmann, caused an uproar this week when, in a radio interview, he compared Israel’s release of 26 terrorists as a “gesture” to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to Norway releasing mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.

Breivik is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence for killing 77 people, mostly youths, by planting a bomb outside Oslo’s main government building and later opening fire on a youth camp on the island of Utoya. The attacks took place in July of 2011.

“To put it in Scandinavian understanding, we can say that the atrocities committed by these Palestinian prisoners can be compared to the actions of Breivik in Norway,” Bachmann said in the interview.

“Imagine that Breivik will be released in some similar gesture like the Palestinian prisoners,” the ambassador added. “Studies have shown that such people return to terrorism. It’s not easy to get public support for the release of such people.”

Following the interview, families of the victims of Breivik’s massacre protested Bachmann’s remarks and argued that there is no room to compare between the release of terrorists by Israel and the mass slaughter committed in Norway. Some of the families claimed that the situation in the Middle East is different because there, they said, there is a genuine struggle “against the occupation”.

Shortly after the court in Norway sentenced him last year, Breivik apologized for not having murdered more people. He recently applied to study political science at the University of Oslo, angering some of the faculty who said they would refuse to have any contact with the 34-year-old killer.

The Almagor Terror Victims Association expressed support for Bachmann’s remarks and denounced the distinctions made by the victims’ families between the murder of Jews and the murder of Norwegians.

“The reactions in Norway trying to differentiate between terrorism directed at Norwegians and terrorism and murder directed against Jews by Palestinians show that the Norwegians have learned nothing from the time period in which European Jews were murdered and they remained silent,” the organization said. “There is regular anti-Semitism in Norway and what was said there today symbolizes the bleak situation there.”

“The argument that the Palestinians are fighting for freedom is an argument that supports terrorism and in that sense, in retrospect after they suffered a terrorist act, they should make the following conclusions: Murder is murder and terror is terror. There is no justification for a Norwegian madman slaughtering children and there is no justification for a normal person killing children,” said Almagor.

Gillian Feinberg (Photo credit: Liron Almog)

Like every mother, Gillian Feinberg has that unscientific but accurate gut feeling when it comes to her children.

“There are those moments that are etched in your memory that you recall after a terrible tragedy happens,” she says, describing what she went through on April 4, 1993, the terrible day that her son, attorney Ian Feinberg, was killed.

“I remember that I asked him not to go into the Gaza Strip on the day of the closure, but he said, ‘Mother, don’t worry. They’re my friends. They know me. I’ll be fine.’ I remember my stomach was churning with worry—I really remember that physical feeling—and that was the day they murdered him.”

Over the past two weeks, Gillian and the other members of her family have been revisiting that horrible day in the office building in Gaza where Ian was murdered. Two busy weeks of protests, media interviews and attending hearings at the High Court of Justice on the petition submitted by the Almagor Terror Victims Association against the release of the Palestinian prisoners went by. But as everyone knows, ultimately the petition was rejected and the murderers, including Ian’s killers, were released last Tuesday night. Another one of his killers had already been released in the 2011 prisoner exchange in which Gilad Schalit was released.

Ian Feinberg’s story is unique. He was not an unfortunate bystander or anonymous victim who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Feinberg devoted his life to helping the Palestinians improve their economic standing. Many of his colleagues saw him as one of their own, and after he was murdered, the Palestinian street, too, was shocked and stunned.

Feinberg’s family, who marked the 20th anniversary of their eldest son’s murder four months ago, never imagined that they would have to deal with the ghosts of the past yet again. For 20 years, his family has been trying to pick up the pieces and move on, and in a stroke of one government decision, the wound has been ripped open once again. In all honesty, it never healed.

The family members are exhausted from two weeks of frustrating battles with the High Court to stop the wretched decision to free the man who murdered their son. Only Gillian, a petite woman with curly hair, agreed to be interviewed; the rest were too tired. Her enormous strength and inner resources shine through her gentle demeanor and calm tone. She believes that “it’s important that Ian be remembered, that people know everything he did for the people who murdered him.”

“We learned that Ian’s murderer was to be released from the media,” she says. “It was also through the media that we learned that he had been murdered. My second eldest son was listening to the radio on the bus, on his way home, and heard that a young Jewish attorney had been murdered in Gaza. He ran home and asked us if we knew where Ian was. We said, ‘Sure. Ian’s at work.’

“I remember that we had just sat down to dinner that evening. He told us what he had heard, and we started making telephone calls. Ian didn’t answer, of course. His wife didn’t know where he was, and for two hours we were beside ourselves. Around 8 p.m., I looked through the kitchen window and saw two people coming up the street, searching for an address. I realized right away that they were looking for us, and so they were.”

Behind Their Backs

Feinberg, who was murdered shortly before his 30th birthday, was survived by his wife and three small children.

“I really wanted to set the date for his birthday celebration with the whole family, but he was so busy with his project in Gaza that he couldn’t commit,” his mother says. “He promised me that the moment he was done, we’d have a proper celebration. He was murdered a few days before the project was completed.”

Feinberg’s family moved to Israel from South Africa out of Zionist motives when Ian was 18. Gillian keeps the trembling out of her voice and the tears from her eyes throughout the entire interview, but when I ask her to tell me about her son, she can no longer keep from weeping.

“Ian was my eldest son. He was a tall and strong young man, but gentle and good. He had a black belt in karate, he was a smart kid, a real genius, but very modest and quiet. He always had a wonderful smile.

“He was a real pursuer of justice. That was why he studied law—to help the weak, the underdog, those who couldn’t look after themselves. Because of that, he was drawn to working with the Palestinians in Gaza. That provided him with the challenge that he needed. When he studied law at Bar-Ilan University, the apartment he rented with his roommate was broken into and items were stolen. Ian found the culprits and asked them nicely to return the stolen items. Within an hour, everything was returned. That was how Ian was. Everyone loved him.”

His connection with the Palestinians began when he served as an attorney for the IDF Military Advocate General inside Gaza. After completing his army service, the law office where he worked accepted a project from the European Union whose purpose was to establish a flour mill in Gaza. Naturally, Ian was assigned to the project.

“He knew everybody there,” says Gillian. “He had a really good relationship with the Palestinians with whom he worked. He invited all his Arab friends to his eldest son’s circumcision ceremony, and they all came. They had a whole table during the celebration. He fit well into working with the European Union because the EU workers didn’t know the local people, and they needed someone who knew the field well. Ian was a perfect fit because of his abilities and his good nature.”

“He had immunity from the European Union, a certificate given to lawyers, social workers and all kinds of people who worked with the Palestinians for the EU. Where was that immunity when he was murdered?”

On the day of the murder, Feinberg was in the EU offices in Gaza for a business meetings. At midday, he and his colleagues went to lunch, and afterward, Ian went back to the office on his own. The murder had been planned in advance, and the murderer was waiting for him on the roof of the building. One of the workers there, whom Ian knew well, collaborated with them, notifying the murderer that Ian had returned and was in his office. Feinberg was attacked a short time later and died of several stab wounds to the neck.

“I didn’t want to know anything then,” Gillian says. “I didn’t attend the murderers’ trial. I didn’t want to know the details. My daughter, Gila [Molcho, who worked intensively to stop the government decision to release her brother’s killer], was involved, and she read the report about the murder, but I didn’t want to see it. It was very hard for us after the murder. I tried to keep the family from falling apart, help us pull ourselves together and go on. I didn’t care what happened to the murderers. I knew they would be going to prison and that was it. I never imagined in my worst nightmares that they would be freed.”

The family found out only recently, at the High Court hearings, that the first killer had been released as part of the deal that freed Gilad Schalit.

“A BBC correspondent approached Gila and told her about it. We hadn’t known at all,” Gillian says. “But that’s all right. If he was released to bring another person home, then it was for a good purpose. A person returned from captivity. But this is something entirely different. The terrorist [Abdel-Aal Sa’id] was released in exchange for nothing, as far as I’m concerned. He was released for no good reason. To start some diplomatic procedure? What has that got to do with it? How exactly will that help?”

Are you angry with the state about the release?

“As far as I’m concerned, the prime minister should have spoken about it with the public. He should have explained the significance of the act to the people of Israel, said that it was difficult, that he was sorry, but it had to be done. It’s the least he could do, in my opinion. It would have eased our pain a little. But they way it was done simply hurts. I felt they had gone behind my back, as if they were hiding something.

“It’s hard for me to see their celebrations. It’s hard for me to see them going back home as though nothing had happened. It’s hard for me to hear the terminology the foreign media networks are using as they cover the release, calling them ‘political prisoners’ or ‘freedom fighters.’ These are not freedom fighters. These are terrorists. These are murderers.”

Ian Feinberg was a good person who believed that people were good at heart and trusted them—and that, as his mother believes, was what led to his death.

“That fact is the hardest one for us,” she says. “The fact that one of his friends betrayed him when all he wanted to do was help them, give them a leg up. Ian believed that if the Palestinians developed a good, strong economic infrastructure, they would be able to move forward and help themselves. He really thought that if we helped them develop their economy, they would live with us in peace. But that didn’t happen.

“They missed a golden opportunity to advance themselves. If he hadn’t been murdered, maybe now they’d be able to have big enterprises and good industry. After his murder, the European Union stopped the project. They were shocked that such a thing could happen. I remember that the EU’s official response was reported in the foreign media. They said that the murder of Ian Feinberg was something that should never have happened.”

Ever since the names of the Palestinian prisoners to be released from jail was publicized, and efforts to prevent the release began, the Feinberg family has undergone an emotional whirlwind that they did not think they would ever experience.

“We feel like we are in a surreal situation, as if this isn’t really happening,” says Gillian. “We planned to voice our objections in court. We were 12 people in all, but the media waited for us and suddenly it became something very big. We didn’t plan on talking, but we did so because it was important for us to raise awareness of the issue, and it was important for us to mention Ian. All our sadness and grief have been opened anew.”

Do you believe that the prisoner release will help move the peace process forward?

“Not at all. One thing has nothing to do with the other. It’s very foolish to link the release of murderers with the peace process. [Former prime ministers Yitzhak] Rabin and [Menachem] Begin promised that they would not release murderers, and look, 20 years later, the exact opposite is happening. Doesn’t the government want people to have good lives here? Doesn’t it want people like me, who came here out of Zionism and sacrificed the dearest thing they had, to live here in peace and quiet? What’s the connection between the peace process and this ‘gesture’ of releasing prisoners? How does that help us? If there’s peace, and I hope there will be one of these days, that will have nothing to do with these terrorists who were released now. It simply makes no sense.”

Do you sometimes regret having moved to Israel?

“No. We moved here for Zionist reasons and we’ve had a good life here for many years. There are so many questions of ‘what would have happened if …’—if Ian hadn’t worked there, if we hadn’t moved here at all. But there’s no sense in thinking about those things. There are people who leave Israel because they don’t want something to happen to them here. So they move to the United States or Canada, and something terrible happens to them there, of all places. It seems that was his fate, and there’s nothing to be done about it now.

“All I wanted was to rebuild our lives here, with the pain. For 20 years I thought we were succeeding, and then something like this happens. Even as we struggled over the past two weeks, I never really thought it would be possible to persuade the government not to release the terrorists. I didn’t think it would help, but I felt it was important to tell Ian’s story, as if he were alive now. I’m sure he’d be proud of us now, and that’s what gives us comfort. After the murder, we didn’t create a monument for him, so maybe that is our way to commemorate him and tell everybody what a wonderful human being he was.”

Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition against the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners filed by the families of their victims.

Supreme Court President Asher Grunis on Tuesday morning issued a statement rejecting the petition, which said the decision to release the prisoners should made by the entire Knesset through legislation and not by a small group of government ministers.

The court said the release of prisoners did not require legislation.

“There is no dispute that the issue at hand is difficult and sensitive,” Grunis said in the statement. “Our hearts go out to the families of the terror victims. But we are certain that the authorized officials made their decision with a heavy heart, taking the families’ position into account.”

The petition was filed by the victims’ families and the Almagor Terror Victims Association.

The government of Israel agreed to release the prisoners in order to bring the Palestinians back to the peace negotiating table.

Late Monday, the prisoners to be released were transferred to the Ayalon Prison in Ramle for processing. They are scheduled to be released no earlier than midnight Tuesday and more likely early Wednesday morning.

Some 14 prisoners will be transferred to Gaza, several of whom are members of Hamas. Eight prisoners on the list were due to be released in the next three years and two in the next six months.

Twenty-one of the prisoners on the list were convicted of killing Israelis or Palestinians accused of being collaborators, and most had served at least 20 years.

Eventually 104 prisoners jailed before the 1993 Oslo Accords will be released in phases over the next eight months, pending progress in the talks.

The peace talks are scheduled to resume Wednesday in Jerusalem following a three-year freeze, but the Palestinians have threatened to skip the meeting in protest over the order in which the prisoners are being released as well as the announcement of new construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, according to reports.

Meir Indor (Flash 90)

Almagor, an organization that represents victims of Arab terrorism, responded with sorrow to the High Court decision to reject its motion against the release of 26 terrorist murderers, as a “gesture” to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Almagor chairman Meir Indor said, “We regret very much that the court, like the prime minister, did not even listen to the serious arguments regarding the government’s crossing of red lines, including the fact that some of the terrorists being released committed their crimes after the Oslo accords were signed.

“The Supreme Court locked its gates today before the bereaved families and the Jewish terror victims – something it does not do when it comes to any Palestinians,” Indor added – noting, among other past decisions by the High Court, its willingness to force the state to change the route of the security fence, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, because of complaints by Arabs.

“The High Court has, in effect, erased the status of the victims and has given its protection to the men of terror, who will be able to demand the release of murderers from now on,” he went on. “This is a very sad day for the bereaved families and Israeli society, and a day of victory for the terror organizations and their supporters.”

Hundreds gather to protest impending release of Palestinian prisoners in TA, August 12, 2013. (Photo: Ben Hartman)

The High Court of Justice on Tuesday rejected the petition of the Almagor Terror Victims Association to intervene and block the government’s decision to release 26 Palestinian prisoners, including some of the worst terrorists with “blood on their hands.”

The court’s decision, following a heated but affirmative vote by the government last week, removed the final barrier for pardoning the prisoners and releasing them.

At the outset of its opinion, the court said that it understood that the issues are “sensitive and complicated, lying at the heart of a public dispute.”

“Despite this,” the decision continued, “all that is before us is the legal question of whether there is any basis to get involved in the government’s decision to release prisoners in the framework of peace talks with the Palestinians.”

The court rejected the central argument of Almagor that this release specifically was more unreasonable than prior releases because terrorists with blood on their hands were being released as part of a general process and without even receiving any Israelis in return, such as during the Gilad Schalit deal.

According to the court, these distinctions were not significant enough for it to violate the cardinal principle that it does not get involved in matters of state, and a prisoner release in the framework of peace talks was emphatically a matter of state.

Next, the court disposed of Almagor’s argument that the current policy of giving the families the final list of prisoners planned to be released only 48 hours before violated their rights under a law granting families of victims to submit opposition in writing to a planned pardon of whoever harmed their family member.

The court said that this law applies only to individual prisoners being pardoned for reasons specific to that prisoner, and was not applicable at all to a general pardon being granted to a group of prisoners in the context of a state-sponsored peace process.

The court also cited the state’s argument that it had gone above and beyond its obligations by giving Almagor information about all of the prisoners, even though the current policy of giving the families of victims details about prisoners being released 48 hours before does not apply to West Bank prisoners, only to those in Israeli prisons.

Multiple times the court noted that the first round – 26 prisoners out of 104 due to be released in four segments over nine months – included only Palestinians and not Israeli Arabs, who reportedly will be in later releases.

It was unclear if the court noted this as a potential stronger argument for Almagor in the future or merely to describe the prisoners being immediately released.

The court concluded its opinion, stating that “our hearts go out to the families of the terror victims, whose anguish is greatest and about which we can do nothing to heal.”

Releasing prisoners who have committed such grave crimes is “the hardest kind of decision,” said the court.

It added that “we are sure that the empowered authorities decided what they decided with a heavy heart, while considering the pain and position of the victims’ families.”

The court also accepted and quoted the state’s argument that the deal was balanced and well conceived, since if the peace process did not go well, future planned prisoner releases will be canceled.

The justices made no reference or response to the angry jeers and shouts from the victims’ families that followed them as they hustled out of the court room on Sunday.

Almagor responded angrily to the High Court decision, saying that “the bereaved families see this as proof that the prime minister’s immoral politics have penetrated the halls of the court.”

“The Supreme Court today closed the door before bereaved families and Jewish victims of terror – something it has not done to Palestinians,” Almagor stated, listing the suspension of the building the security barrier and acquiescence to requests to stop certain interrogation and arrest procedures as examples of the court’s bending to the will of the Palestinians.

Bayit Yehudi MK Yoni Chetboun, who participated in protests against freeing terrorists, said he finds it unfortunate that bereaved families are almost alone in their fight against the prisoner release, calling the situation a “moral failure.”

Protester holds picture of the Weiss family (Israel news photo: Flash 90)

The High Court rejected a motion by the Almagor group for victims of terrorism, to block the release of Arab terrorists from prison that is scheduled to take place Tuesday night.

“Our hearts are with the family members, whose pain is great,” wrote the judges, headed by Supreme Court President Asher Grunis. “We are certain that the authorized elements made their decision with a heavy heart and took into account the families’ pain and their opinion.”

Before the decision, Attorney Naftali Wertzberger, who represents Almagor, said that he believes the release of the 26 terrorists, which the Israeli goverment has described as a “gesture” to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, could still be prevented.

The court had not yet issued a verdict in Almagor’s appeal against the release, which is unusual, he told IDF Radio (Galei Tzahal). “The very fact that the court has not yet issued a decision leaves room for hope,” he explained.

He noted that on Monday it was revealed that the list of terrorists to be freed includes six who were jailed for crimes committed after the Oslo Accords were signed, despite government statements saying only pre-Oslo killers would be freed.

“If the court prevents the release of only those six – it will be small comfort,” he said. The release is scheduled to take place Tuesday.

Almagor’s problem with the planned terrorist release lies elsewhere. “The problem as we see it is moral. There’s a precedent for releasing members of terrorist groups, but not murderers,” Wertzberger explained.

“All these years they’ve said they won’t free people with ‘blood on their hands,’ and now we see them freeing terrorists who murdered people with an axe, who did terrible things, horrific things,” he added.

“The question is a moral one and the explanations calling this a diplomatic matter aren’t relevant here. No country on earth would release people like this, under circumstances like this,” he argued.

He linked the plan to free terrorists to the death Monday of 98-year-old Nazi war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary. “The Nazi criminal who died did similar things to those who will be freed. There’s a dissonance between chasing down everyone who murdered people and prisoner release,” he said.

Wertzberger’s argument echoed a reaction from Rabbi Eliezer Weiss, whose wife and three young sons were burnt to death in a terrorist attack 22 years ago. The Weiss family’s murderers are expected to go free as part of the prisoner release deal.

The family of Palestinian prisoner Atiyeh Salem (Photo: Reuters)

The following is a list – with information provided by the Almagor Terror Victims Association – of the 26 Palestinian prisoners scheduled to be released from Israeli jails on Tuesday as part of confidence-building measures offered by Jerusalem in an attempt to bolster recently restarted Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

1. Fayez Mutawi al-Khur, who established a Fatah cell of 20 members and was jailed in November 1985 for the murder of Menahem Dadon and the attempted murder of Salomon Abukasis. The two had been shot in the Gaza City market two years earlier.

2. Salah Ibrahim Ahmed Mugdad, who was arrested in June 1993 for the murder of Israel Tenenbaum, a 72-year-old security guard at the Sirens Hotel in Netanya. The Fatah member struck Tenenbaum on the head with an iron bar and stole a television set from the hotel.

3. Samir Nayef al-Na’neesh, who was arrested in March 1989 for the murder of Binyamin Meisner, a reservist killed the previous month while on patrol in Nablus. Meisner was confronted by members of al-Na’neesh’s cell, causing him to enter an alley where other cell members were waiting with rocks.

4. Yusef Abdel Hamid Irshaid, who was arrested in March 1993 for the murder of Nidal Rabo Ja’ab, Adnan Aj’ad Dib, Mofid Can’an, Tawfik Jaradat and Ibrahim Said. Irshaid suspected them of collaborating with Israel and killed them after a violent interrogation. He was also convicted of numerous attempts to kill others he suspected of collaboration.

5. Mustafa Othman al-Haj, who was arrested in June 1989 for the murder of 48-year-old Steven Frederick Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld had been hiking in the hills near Ariel and was stabbed with his own knife by a group of shepherds, who hid his body.

6. Salameh Abdallah Musleh, who was charged in October 1993 with the murder of Reuven David two years earlier. David, 59, owned a Petah Tikva grocery store. He was beaten and robbed by Musleh and an accomplice.

7. Atiyeh Salem Musa, who, along with an accomplice, used an ax to murder a Jewish co-worker, 67-year-old Isaac Rotenberg, during Passover 1994. The murder took place while Rotenberg was hunched on his knees fixing a floor at his place of employment in Petah Tikva. He was struck on the back of his neck, dying two days later.

8. Salah Mahmoud Mukled, who was arrested in July 1993 for the stabbing death in a Gush Katif greenhouse of Yeshayahu Deutsch, his Jewish employer, and the attempted murder of another local resident.

9. and 10. Mohamed Abdel Majid Sawalha, who was arrested for murder and attempted murder in December 1990, and his accomplice, Hosni Faregh Sawalha, who was charged with murder and for being an accessory to murder.

The two, minors at the time, stabbed to death 24-year-old Baruch Yaacov Heisler, a passenger on a bus from Petah Tikva to Tel Aviv. They attempted to attack other passengers as well. A second accomplice was killed by a police officer.

11. Atef Izzat Sha’ath, who was arrested in March 1993 for being an accessory to murder after driving three terrorists to the crime scene and driving them away afterward. The victim, Simcha Levy, made a living in Gush Katif by providing transportation to local workers.

The terrorists were dressed as female agricultural workers and rode in Levy’s vehicle, where they stabbed her to death and fled.

12. Yusef Said al-Al, who was charged in February 1994 with throwing explosives and for being an accessory to murder.

He and accomplices threw two hand grenades at a Border Police unit. The grenades did not explode. He also planted a bomb near a Border Patrol facility and assisted in the murder of a Jewish civilian by passing on information about the lack of soldiers in the area where the killing took place.

13. Midhat Fayez Barbakh, who was arrested in January 1994 for murder. He participated in the ambush of his employer, 61-year-old Moshe Beker, who was in charge of an orchard in Rishon Lezion.

Along with two others, Barbakh waited for Beker in the morning and upon his arrival stabbed him to death with a knife and a pair of pruning shears.

14. Ali Ibrahim al-Rai, who was arrested in April 1994 for the murder of Moris Eisenstatt. Al-Rai killed the 79-year-old by striking him in the head with an ax as Eisenstatt sat on a public bench in Kfar Saba.

15. Mohamed Jaber Nashbat, who was arrested in September 1990 for being an accessory to murder. Nashbat threw rocks at 46-year-old soldier Amnon Pomeranz and poured gasoline on his vehicle, after which it was set alight with Pomeranz inside. The murder took place at the Al Burej refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

16. Samir Hussein Murtaj, who was convicted in October 1993 for the abduction, interrogation through torture, and murder of four local residents: Samir Alsilawi, Khaled Malka, Nasser Aqila and Ali al Zaabot. The victims were suspected of having collaborated with Israel.

17. Faraj Saleh al-Rimahi, who was arrested in July 1992 for the ax murder of 84-yearold Avraham Kinstler in the Sharon region. While in prison, he also engaged in efforts to obtain a weapon for abducting a soldier.

18. and 19. Ala Eddin Ahmed Abu Sitteh and Ayman Taleb Abu Sitteh, who were charged with murder in January 1994 after they stabbed to death David Dadi, 43, and Hayim Weizman, 33. The two were killed while sleeping at Dadi’s apartment in Ramle. The Sittehs, who had been working in a nearby apartment, severed the victims’ ears after killing them.

20. Esmat Omar Mansour, who was arrested in October 1993 for being an accessory to murder. A minor at the time, Mansour helped subdue the victim, 30-year-old Hayim Mizrahi, who was on his way to buy eggs from an Arab-owned farm near his home. Mizrahi’s body was stuffed into the trunk of his vehicle, which the terrorists used to flee.

21. Khaled Mohamed Asakreh, who was charged in May 1991 with murder in the stabbing death of French tourist Annie Ley. Ley was dining at the restaurant where Asakreh was employed.

22. and 23. Nihad Yusef Jundiyeh and Mohamed Mahmoud Hamdiyeh, who were arrested in July 1989 for the murder of Jewish contractor Zalman Shlein. The two minors stabbed Shlein to death with a knife after traveling with him to a construction site where he was building a house. They also beat him with an iron pole.

24. Jamil Abdel Wahab Natsheh, who was charged with being an accessory to murder in December 1992 for acting as the escape driver for terrorists who shot at IDF soldiers at the Cave of the Patriarchs. One soldier was killed and another was wounded.

25. Taher Mohamed Zaboud, who was arrested in February 1993 for murder, hijacking a vehicle and attempting to steal a weapon. Zaboud’s accomplice fired shots at the driver, Avraham Cohen, but fled when they realized he was not carrying a weapon.

26. Burhan Subaih, who was arrested in February 2001 for the murder of Jamil Muhammad Naim Sabih and Aisha Abdullah Haradin.

A bus with freed Palestinians was thronged near the Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning. (Mahmud Hams/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

Israel released 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners late Tuesday as part of an American-brokered deal allowing the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on Wednesday.

A cheer went up as the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, escorted 11 of the prisoners into the presidential compound here after 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. The crowd, made up mainly of relatives and friends of the returning prisoners, had started to thin out but grew larger as they approached. After the official reception, they sped off to their homes around the West Bank in convoys, their pictures taped to the car windows, their horns honking.

The other 15 prisoners released by Israel went directly to their homes in Gaza.

The overnight release was widely thought here to have been timed by Israel to try to minimize scenes of celebration and news media coverage. The Palestinian public has also been somewhat apathetic over an Israeli gesture seen by many Palestinians as too little, too late.

Still, here on the Palestinian side of the divide, the prisoners, most of whom had served 20 years or more in prison for deadly attacks against Israelis, were viewed as political prisoners who had sacrificed for the cause and a potent symbol of resistance to Israeli occupation.

“For sure, they are heroes,” said Husam Sawalha, 38, the brother of a released prisoner, Hosni Sawalha, from Azmut in the northern West Bank. Husam Sawalha said that the whole village would join in a big celebration on Wednesday.

But like the visceral struggle over history, land and birthright that has made the lengthy conflict so intractable, this cause for Palestinian rejoicing was a source of deep anguish in Israel. Israel had released Palestinian prisoners before, usually in exchange for captured Israeli soldiers. This release, many Israelis said, was too painful a concession with too little in return.

“What sort of peace is this?” asked Meir Indor, the chairman of Almagor, an Israeli organization that represents victims of terrorist attacks. “The Palestinians are getting a rubber stamp from the United States and Israel to kill legitimately,” he said in an interview at the Israeli Supreme Court. The court rejected his petition to halt the release, ruling that such decisions were the government’s prerogative.

Israeli newspapers were filled this week with photographs of the victims of the prisoners to be released and of the victims’ relatives holding protests and vigils. Most Israelis view the returning prisoners as terrorists, not freedom fighters.

In 1990, when they were 16 years old, Hosni Sawalha and his cousin Muhammad Sawalha boarded a bus near Tel Aviv and began stabbing passengers, killing Baruch Heisler, a 24-year-old Israeli, and injuring others. The cousins were convicted of murder and attempted murder and were sentenced to life in prison.

Hosni Sawalha’s brother, Husam, said they had been reacting to Israeli pressure on the Palestinians, adding that Israel had confiscated land from their village for a nearby Jewish settlement.

More than 100 relatives and friends from Azmut came to greet the two men at the presidential compound. A group of young men chanted, “With our blood and souls we will redeem the prisoners,” as they danced in a circle. The mothers of the released prisoners were dressed in white, as if for a wedding.

Asked if killing Mr. Heisler, a civilian riding the bus, had been a heroic act, Nasseem Hawamdeh, a friend of the cousins from Azmut, said that Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers were also civilians.

The parents of Mr. Heisler, contacted earlier on Tuesday, declined to be interviewed. “It is decided and done now,” his mother said of the imminent release. “What will it help?”

The Palestinian leadership has long demanded the release of prisoners who were convicted of crimes committed before the Oslo peace accords of 1993 took effect. As an incentive to keep the Palestinians at the negotiating table, Israel has agreed to release a total of 104 long-serving prisoners in four stages, beginning Tuesday and continuing over the next few months.

Some of the prisoners’ relatives in Ramallah spoke of the wasted years in prison and the need for peace.

“Nations change,” said Abdel Halim Ahmed Irshaid, 80, a cousin of a released prisoner from a village near Jenin who had been sentenced to four life terms plus 45 years for his involvement in the killing of an Israeli Druze citizen and three Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. “This is one step toward ending the war between us and the Jews,” Mr. Irshaid added.

Also among those released was Yousef Said Abdel Al from Gaza, where hundreds of relatives and supporters waited to greet the freed prisoners at the Erez crossing. Mr. Abdel Al was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of Ian Feinberg, an Israeli lawyer who was bludgeoned to death with an ax in 1993 while working on a European aid project in Gaza. He was 30 and married with three children.

Mr. Feinberg had done an internship as a civilian working for the Israeli military prosecution in Gaza. Later, he was asked to work on the European project because of his good relations and contacts there.

This week, outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, where the family had joined the petition against the prisoner release, Gillian Feinberg remembered her son as somebody who had always tried to help the underdog.

Ms. Feinberg said that she had worried about his working in Gaza, but that a few days before his murder he had told her: “Ma, everybody knows me here. I’m safe.”

Ms. Feinberg said she thought the Palestinian convicted of wielding the ax would be released in one of the next phases. If the current prisoner release were coming at the end of peace talks, rather than at the beginning, she said, “then I would say it was for something.”

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv is braced for angry demonstrations following the publication of the names of 26 Palestinian prisoners to be released by Israel on Wednesday as part of the build-up to peace negotiations.

Since the publication of the names on Sunday, the Israeli government has been flooded with protest letters written by families of terror victims. Members of the public have two days to appeal.

The Almagor Terror Victims Association said in a statement: “This is a day of celebration for Palestinian terror organisations and a sad day for bereaved families and for Israeli society.”

According to Haaretz, 21 of the 26 were convicted of killing Israelis or suspected Palestinian collaborators. Among the 26 prisoners, three were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, two from Hamas and one from Islamic Jihad.

Over the coming months, 104 Palestinian prisoners will be released as part of a peace-talks deal brokered by the US.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Housing Minister Uri Ariel has approved the construction of 1,187 housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

“No country in the world takes orders from other countries where it can build and where it can’t,” he said, “We will continue to market the homes, and to build in the entire country… This is the right thing at the present time, for Zionism and for the economy.”

Moshe Deutsch in one of his greenhouses (Flash 90)

The terrorist that murdered Yeshayahu Deutsch, a prominent farmer in Kfar Yam, Gush Katif, will be released this week in accordance with the government’s decision to set free 104 terrorist murderers, as a “gesture” to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

In 1993, Yeshayahu was called into his greenhouse by his workers, where they carried out the attack and killed him.

Yeshayahu’s brother, Moshe Deutsch, spoke during an interview with Arutz , saying “that villainous terrorist, who is now 41 years old, gets a new life, while Shaya’s life was destroyed at age 39 This wound has remained open for many years,” said Deutsch. “Time has not healed it. Shaya was an outstanding person. Even now we are still using innovations he developed in agriculture.”

Moshe Deutsch said that no state official has bothered to notify them of the release. “Had it not been for the Almagor anti-terror organization, we wouldn’t have known at all that they were releasing him before he was set free. Almagor head Meir Indor spoke with us; they call it the first throb of pain, but for us it is not a throb of pain, because we are still left with the loss,” he said.

The Deutsch family was previously involved in a struggle with the government, when the state decided to demolish their Jewish-owned farm in the Judean hills.

PA terrorists in court (file) (Israel news photo: Flash 90)

Yaakov and Miriam Tubul, whose son Lior was stabbed to death by terrorists 23 years ago, are enraged with the government’s decision to set free 104 terrorist murderers, as a “gesture” to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

The pained and grief-stricken parents say they cannot understand the government’s decision.

“How can you release a murderer who stabbed an innocent Jewish youth 17 times, in the heart of Jerusalem? These are animals, not human beings,” cried Miriam.

Miriam was not allowed to speak at the Jerusalem court hearing Sunday that discussed a motion to stop the release from taking place. Nonetheless, she called out to the judges: “These people murdered my son and his friend. Murdered by stabbing, with unbelievable cruelty. We trusted the court, that these murderers would rot in jail, and here you are, allowing their release and not even agreeing to hear us.”

On August 4, 1990, Lior left his home at Kiryat Yovel with his friend, Ronen Levi Karamani. The two were supposed to meet a friend at Givat Ze’ev, in northern Jerusalem. Another friend took them in his car to the bridge at the neighborhood of Ramot. When they failed to show up at the meeting, the friend phoned the Tubuls and the search for the two began.

It turned out that a car with three terrorists inside it took the two from the bridge. The terrorists threatened the two, tied them up and then stabbed them in numerous parts of their body. Their bodies were found in a wadi between Beit Hanina and Ramot, two days later. They were given a joint funeral and buried side by side.

The Almagor terror victims’ group says that one of the three terrorists who murdered the two boys, Abd-el Jawad Shamasna, is on the list of terrorists whom the government intends to release in the “gestures” for the “peace talks” with the PA. However, he does not appear to be in the first batch of terrorists, who are to be released this week.

Some 20 Israelis whose loved ones’ killers are set to be released as part of renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians marched from the Mount Herzl cemetery to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on Sunday in protest of intended prisoners’ release.

The High Court of Justice held a hearing on a petition filed against the move by bereaved families. On Sunday evening, a ministerial committee will convene to discuss which 26 prisoners will be the first to be released. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is recovering from a hernia operation, will not be present. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon will serve as committee chair.

At the end of the hearing, from which it could be inferred that the panel will not overturn past rulings, some family members ran up to the judges to express their protest. “I’m not just a number on a list,” said Gila Molcho. “You can’t keep treating this as a purely legal proceeding.”

During the hearing, Attorney Naftali Vertzberg from the Almagor organization argued that the release in question is entirely different from past gestures. “This time there’s no one holding a gun against our head like in the Shalit deal. It’s just a gesture and in all the past gestures we released terrorists who served time for much lesser charges.”

Families outside Supreme Court (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

Attorney Michal Tzuck-Shefer representing the State said that the decision is one for the government but noted that if negotiations fail the release can be halted.

The bereaved families marched holding pictures of their loved ones and white flags. Miriam and Yaakov Tobol, who lost their son Lior in a terror attack in 1990 said that on Thursday they got a call from the National Insurance Institute informing them that their son’s killer will be released this week.

“We phoned the Defense Ministry, the Prime Minister’s Office and were told we’ll get a call back, but we never did,” said a tearful Yaakov. “No one there feels this pain in our hearts. For 23 years I haven’t been able to sleep trying to recreate what happened to my son in those moments. The investigators told us he managed to run for 80 meters before his blood flow stopped. Let the ministers think about that before they sign off (on the release).”

Established two weeks ago, the ministerial committee will convene for the first time on Sunday evening to determine which 26 prisoners will be released on Tuesday – a day before Israeli and Palestinian negotiators meet in Jerusalem.

In court. ‘I’m not just a number on a list’ (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

An official list has yet to be released but some bereaved families claim to have already been informed that their loved ones’ killers are about to be freed.

Gila Molcho lost her brother Ian Feinberg while on a European Union mission in Gaza. “Where are the people of Israel? Why am I here alone,” she cried. “We are selling ourselves cheap. Every person I’ve met told me how right I was and how wrong this (the release) is, but no one looks me in the eyes.

“We cannot fight this irrational step alone. I beg of you, come here and say this is unacceptable.”

Ron Kerman lost his daughter Tal in a terror attack on a bus in Haifa. “The government promised not to enter into negotiations with preconditions but they gave in and did so with the toughest precondition of all – freeing traitor terrorists,” he said. “We’ve never sunk this low.”

Yossi Dor, father of Asaf Dor who was also murdered in the terrorist bombing in Haifa, said: “We’re not that naïve to think the Supreme Court will outlay the move. But the court has to send a message today, like in the Zvi Bar case. Let them say that it’s ‘Kosher but smells of something bad’, let them say that it makes no sense that negotiations haven’t even started yet and already we are releasing lowlife murderers.”

Oded Karmani, who lost his brother Ronen, said that one of his brother’s murderers was released in the Shalit deal. “We consented then to the release of murderer for a live soldier, which has so much value. But we’ve come here today to cry out against the release of criminal murders, among them my brother’s murderer, for nothing.

“How can we believe them, when Abu Mazen keeps declaring that terror is his way. How can we believe them, when 40% of prisoners who are freed go back to terror. We are crying here in the face of those who killed, murdered, bombed and slaughtered and are now being released as heroes with no reward.

The criteria by which the ministers will determine the prisoners’ identities were set by the Shin Bet, which categorized prisoners based on different parameters. The aim is that the identity of those released will bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ while also being reasonably accepted by the Israeli public.

The Shin Bet’s lists will be presented to the ministers Sunday, and the names will be released to the public after the meeting. The law stipulates that prisoners’ names must be published in the Shin Bet website 48 hours prior to the release. President Shimon Peres will probably not have to sign paroles, since most of the prisoners released in the first round are Palestinian citizens—in which case the military grants their release.

“There will never be peace here, it is very difficult to cope.” This is the sentiment of the families of the victims of the 26 prisoners expected to be released as part of resuming peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. They responded Monday morning with disapproval to the decision to include the killers of their loved ones on the list of those to be released.

Meanwhile, dozens of protesters, including bereaved families and representatives of Almagor, My Israel and Im Tirtzu organizations, are rallying outside the Kirya in Tel Aviv against release.

“We came to try and stop the murderers’ release. This is a black day for the bereaved families and citizens,” said Avi, a protestor, cousin of Avraham Brumberg, killed in 1981.

Protest in Tel Aviv (Video: Moti Kimchi)

“We pay the price of the PM and political echelon’s fear, a price of blood and further victims.”

Mika, Brumberg’s sister-in-law, added that “The PM evaded the responsibility. The terrorists learned and were educated in jail in our expense and now to go back to celebrate in the villages.”

The protesters are carrying signs reading “Have we gone mad” and waving pictures of loved ones who were murdered.

At the same time, the Almagor Terror Victims Association turned to the High Court of Justice and requested to issue an injunction to prevent to release of 26 Palestinian prisoners Tuesday.

Families Dismayed

“I feel horrible,” said Bella Beker, widow of the late Moshe Beker, a citrus grower from Rishon Lezion, who was murdered in 1994. The killer, Barbakh Faiz Rajab Madhat who was sentenced to life imprisonment, is included on the list of those to be released. The prisoners are scheduled to be freed from Israeli prisons by Wednesday.

“It feels terrible to release the killer,” said Beker’s widow. “I would like to know – if to the Prime Minister such a disaster happened, and they released the killer, how he would feel. And for what? For peace?”

Daughter Tzvia Dahan also joined the criticism. She said that the deal that brought Shalit’s release included a person who was involved in the murder of her father. “Our pain was great,” she recalled, “but I was happy for the Shalit family that their son was back home. Now this is something unclear, what peace will there be? My father loved the State of Israel, he went to work one Friday morning and now we don’t have a father anymore. They killed him in the orchard and now they get rewarded.”

The first installment which brings with it the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners also includes Abu Moussa Salam Ali Atiya, one of the murderers of Holocaust survivor Isaac Rotenberg in Petah Tikva in late 1994. His son, Pinchas, who lives in Azor, said this morning that the family members are hurt and frustrated by the decision of the Ministerial Committee, and especially the fact that it is not within the power of families to change the decree.

Widow and daughter of Moshe Beker

“This decision is not acceptable to us under any circumstance. We have lived here long enough to know that nothing will come of this gesture,” said the bereaved son. “This is a very exaggerated price so that the world will not say that we did not do the maximum, and I do not believe that even among the negotiators, there are those who believe that anything will come of this. I know all the slogans, peace is made with enemies, etc., but the mind cannot fathom why we should make such a significant gesture so that someone on the other side will deign to sit with us.”

Two weeks ago, Matan, the grandson of Rotenberg, published a fuming Facebook status over the move. “Nineteen years ago my grandfather, Isaac Rotenberg, was murdered. Grandfather was a survivor of the Sobibor death camp, survived the uprising, joined the partisans and fought against the Germans. When the war ended, he came to Israel and was deported by the British to a detention camp in Cyprus. With the establishment of the state, he came to Israel, fought and was wounded in the War of Independence. All his life, he worked in construction and built the country. Literally. And doing this work he was murdered.”

Matan added, “During Passover in 1994, at age 67, while he was repairing a floor and was down on his knees, two Arab workers, aged 18 and 23, came into the building, and struck him in the neck with an ax. He was seriously injured and fell into a coma. Days later, he died of his wounds. Today, 19 years after the murder, the government decided to release the killers,” he said.

“They are now aged 37 and 42. They have their entire lives ahead of them. They will get a monthly salary from the Hamas government. They will return to their families in the Gaza Strip, be carried on their shoulders, hold up the victory sign, they will be received as heroes and live the rest of their lives happily. Because of the fact that they killed an elderly pensioner with whom they worked. From them I expect this, but I did not expect it from the government I elected. Making a gesture for agreeing to sit and talk. When we reach agreements, then release them,” Matan said.

A few days ago, Estee Harris of Ein Vered learned that Salah Ibrahim Ahmad Mughdad, the murderer of her father, the late Israel Tenenbaum, is also set to be released. Tenenbaum worked as a night watchman at the Sironit Hotel in Netanya. He was murdered in June 1993. “We have not received any official notification of the release,” said Esther.” My brother lives in the US, and a few days ago he was in an Israeli cafe where he saw the release list. He was the one who told me.”

“Liberation for Good Cause”

Harris added that she had not mentioned the expected release to her elderly mother. Despite the pain, she hopes that the move may be end up with a positive result.

“I have only one hope, and it is that this release will be for a good cause,” Harris said. “Whether it will do something in the right direction. Nothing can return my father. But maybe it will succeed in saving other people. I wish.”

Opponents of the deal to free terrorists hold photos of slain family members on Mount Herzl. (Photo: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)

Israeli terror victim organization Almagor reacted early Monday morning to the announcement of the names of the first 26 prisoners to be released as a gesture of goodwill to the Palestinians.

“This is a day of celebration for the Palestinian terror organizations, and a sad day for bereaved families and for Israeli society,” Almagor head Meir Indor said.

He accused the Israeli government of “caving in to terror and covering this up with an array of PR stunts,” and vowed to “turn heaven and earth to fight against terror and to bring the terrorists to justice.”

The Israel Prison Service published on Sunday overnight a list of 26 Palestinian prisoners who will be released from Israeli jails ahead of renewed peace negotiations after a ministerial panel approved their release.

The names of the prisoners were released on the Israel Prisons Service website after the families of the victims were notified of the pending release. The public now has 48 hours to appeal the release.

The first 26 Palestinian prisoners on the Israel Prisons Service list do not include any Israeli citizens. Number 26 on the prisoner list is a man reportedly arrested in February 2001, contradicting statements that prisoners were to be pre-Oslo detainees.

Fourteen of the 26 Palestinian prisoners are to be released to the Gaza Strip, and the remaining 12 will go to the West Bank, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement close to midnight.

Eight of those to be released were in any event to be released over the next three years, with two of them up for release within the next six months.

Three of the five ministers authorized by the cabinet two weeks ago to draw up the list of 26 prisoners to be released in four stages over the next nine months of negotiations met late Sunday night to come up with the names.

Officials on Sunday night confirmed that 26 of the 104 pre-Oslo Palestinian prisoners will be released before Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat meet Wednesday in Jerusalem to begin talks.

The Director of the Almagor Organization for Terror Victims has promised they will continue to fight against the release of the 26 terrorists, which is scheduled for tomorrow (Tuesday). “I asked them to publish the list of those to be released this morning, but the Justice Dept. has refused.”

Demonstrations are expected to take place today (Monday), at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, against the decision to release the 26 terrorists, some of whom were serving life sentences.

The Almagor Organization’s director commented that “it has to be stated directly, that the terrorist organizations have defeated Netanyahu and his government,” and that they (Almagor) will “turn over heaven and earth to fight terrorism and ensure that terrorists are punished.”

Relatives of Israelis killed in terror attacks holding signs as they demonstrate outside the Supreme Court in Jerusalem on August 11, 2013. (Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Responding to Sunday’s publication of the list of 26 Palestinian prisoners to be released on Wednesday as part of Israel’s confidence-building measures to help the restart of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, the Almagor Terror Victims Association, which represents families of victims of terror, said in a statement that “this is a day of celebration for Palestinian terror organizations and a sad day for bereaved families and for Israeli society.”

The bereaved families were to stage a demonstration on Monday afternoon in front of the Kirya Defense Headquarters in Tel Aviv to protest the prisoner release. On Sunday, they petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice in an attempt to prevent the release. The court has historically refrained from intervening in such processes.

Families of terror victims now have 48 hours to appeal the government decision.

Late Sunday night, the families sent an urgent letter to government ministers requesting the chance to appear before them to plead their case. They sought an hour for each family.

The families also sought to appear before President Shimon Peres, who is due to sign most of the pardons for the Palestinian prisoners. The president has no plans to meet with the families, Army Radio reported Monday.

Gila Molcho, whose brother Ian Feinberg was killed in Gaza in 1993, echoed the Almagor statement to Channel 2 television on Monday morning. She said that the released prisoners “are going to be celebrated” upon their arrival home. “It’s not (like) Gilad Shalit coming home,” Molcho said. “There is no gun to our head.”

Gilad Shalit was an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas terrorists in 2006. He was released in 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom, like those being released as a concession to the Palestinian Authority for the resumption of the peace talks, were convicted of murdering Israeli citizens.

Molcho said that the prisoners to be released “are murderers who …will return to their ways,” adding that that they will be considered heroes who will become Palestinian leaders while Israelis suffer.

“This is not a step toward peace, this is a step toward catastrophe,” Molcho said. “No one turned to us [the bereaved families] about this release,” she lamented. “There was no concern for our well-being.”

Molcho added that she hoped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would change his mind. “Our blood is not a gesture,” she said.

A statement by the Prime Minister’s Office released late Sunday night, after the panel approved the 26 names, read: ”In the wake of the government’s decision to renew diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and to authorize a ministerial panel for prisoner releases for the duration of the negotiations, the ministerial panel met this evening.”

The identities of the prisoners were made public on the Israel Prisons Service website, www.ips.gov.il, at approximately 1 a.m. The names and I.D. numbers of the prisoners were listed alongside the names of their victims.

Initially, the PMO would only say that 14 of the prisoners “will be transferred to Gaza” and 12 “were from Judea and Samaria [the West Bank].” Eight of the prisoners were in any case slated to be released over the next three years, having served out their sentences, the PMO noted. Two were already slated for release in the next six months.

“In the discussion [of the panel on Sunday], it was emphasized that if any of the released [prisoners] return to hostile activities against the State of Israel, they will be returned to complete their prison term,” the PMO statement said.

The prisoner release is set to take place on Wednesday, the same day as the next round of peace talks is set to begin in Jerusalem. The two sides are set to meet again the week after in the West Bank town of Jericho.

Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority were restarted two weeks ago in Washington, after over three years without direct talks. The sides have agreed to a nine month timeline in an attempt to reach an agreement and end the conflict.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday that no freed Palestinian prisoners will be deported, despite claims by Israel that it will demand that some West Bankers be sent to Gaza or neighboring Arab countries.

Abbas added that Israeli Arabs and Jerusalem residents would be among the rest of the 104 prisoners to released by Israel in three more phases as the talks continue.

Ziad Abu Ain, the deputy Palestinian prisoners minister, told AFP that the PA “welcomed the release of any Palestinian prisoner from Israeli jails,” and expressed his hope that the older prisoners would be the first ones freed.

“We hope that Israel will commit to releasing the rest of the prisoners, and ask and hope the Palestinian side will have a partner to choose the conditions and names of those set to be released,” Abu Ain said.

The publication of the identities of the prisoners came several hours after Housing Minister Uri Ariel announced Sunday that some 1,200 homes for Jewish families would be built in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, a move slammed by the Palestinians as “destroying the chances for peace.”

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters Sunday that Israeli construction in settlements could force him and his team “to leave the negotiating table.”

Meir Indor, chairman of the Almagor terror victims organization slammed the decision to release 26 prisoners as part of resuming peace talks and said that “the terror groups defeated the Netanyahu government.”

“Israeli politicians have succumbed to terror and are covering it up with a series of publicity stunts. We shall fight to see terrorists punished,” he added.

The chairman of the Almagor Terror Victims organization, Meir Indor, criticized on Sunday night the decision to release 26 terrorists, saying that “the terrorist organizations defeated the Netanyahu government.”

“This is a holiday for the Palestinian terrorist organizations and a sad day for the bereaved families and for Israeli society,” said Indor. “The Israeli politicians surrendered to terrorism and are covering it up in a series of PR stunts. We will fight to have the terrorists punished.”

The High Court of Justice on Sunday heard the Almagor Terror Victims Association petition to block the government’s recent decision to release 104 of the worst Palestinian prisoners with “blood on their hands,” starting with a first round of releases on Tuesday.

The highly controversial prisoner release was decided on recently by the government as part of a last goodwill gesture required for restarting the peace process with the Palestinians for the first time in years, which, if continued, will result in three further releases over the next nine months.

At a press conference right before the hearing, Almagor head Meir Indor, proclaiming his opposition to the release said, “What kind of justice is this? The High Court should tell America and the Palestinians that there are judges in Jerusalem!” The victims’ families worked hard to try to convince the court that there were unique reasons for blocking this release deal, though the court has refrained over and over again from intervening to block similar deals in the past.

“With Gilad Schalit, we got him back. Here, we are releasing prisoners with blood on their hands and receiving nothing in return,” attorney Naftali Wurzburger told the High Court during the hearing.

Pressed on whether he really had any legal arguments to make or whether his appeal was only emotional, Wurzburger responded that “legal and moral issues cannot be separated in a decision of such monumental importance.”

Wurzburger also tried, likely in vain in light of the judges negative responses, to convince the court that the moral aspects of the issue removed it from being a sovereign statecraft issue which the executive branch could decide without judicial oversight.

Indor also spoke briefly during the hearing, with his voice rising steadily, saying, “After losing on 25 petitions, people ask will the court ever change? I still believe you can change with the changing situation. We want to strengthen the court. It is good for the court to be just. The courts said to put a person in jail, and this court should defend that ruling.”

The state responded telling the court that there was no precedent for it to interfere with government decisions to release terrorist-prisoners – even with blood on their hands.

Trying to show that the deal was balanced and well conceived, the state also added that “if the peace process did not go well, future planned prisoner releases will be canceled.”

The state also emphasized that it had promptly provided all information about the prisoners being released to those victims’ families who had made official requests to the Justice Ministry.

It added that it could not be accused of failing to provide the information, noting that Almagor was already displaying some of the information on its website.

Finally, to show that it had carefully debated and weighed its options before deciding to move forward with the deal, the state said: “There was a debate on the issue of the deal for several hours, ministers asked questions, the prime minister said it was a hard decision and some even voted against it.”

The hearing ended with the three justices hastily shuffling out of the room to the angry jeers and shouts of the victims’ families.

Earlier in the day and leading up to the noon showdown before the High Court, the Almagor association held a protest and march on Mount Herzl against the release of the Palestinian prisoners.

Beginning around 10 a.m., the protesters began marching, carrying black flags and banners.

The protests continued at the memorial for terror victims and then moved on to the High Court itself, where a press conference of victims’ families addressed the assembled media.

The killers of Ron Kehrmann and Yossi Tzur’s children were released during the Schalit deal, but they came to support the current families petitioning the court.

Ron Kehrmann spoke to the media on behalf of his murdered daughter Tal, stating that the prisoners due to be released are “not national icons. They killed babies, civilians on buses and in restaurants.”

He added, “This is not the way to make peace. This is not justice.”

Yossi Tzur spoke on behalf of his murdered son Assaf, saying that his son’s murderer was “sentenced to 17 life terms,” but he had been “released after only eight years.”

In a begging voice he called out to the court and the government, “Stop it.”

Members of the Fineberg family spoke of their dead relative Ian, who was killed 20 years ago while trying to build an EU-sponsored factory in Gaza to bring jobs to Gazans and further peace.

The family said that one nearby Palestinian had tried to stop the factory security guard who murdered Ian by saying “Don’t kill him, he is one of ours,” but the murderer killed him anyway.

Other victims also spoke up, shouting “Our dead are crying out!” and “Stop this injustice!” Also on Sunday, another group, the Organization for Victims of Terror, said that it had sent a letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu two weeks ago asking questions about the release and had never received an answer.

A spokesman said that, putting aside whether the deal was justified, many members of the organization felt that Netanyahu and the government were avoiding them, and they first found out about the deal from the media, rather than the state having the sensitivity to pre-inform them.

Israeli terror victim organization Almagor reacted on Sunday night to the announcement of the names of the first 26 prisoners to be released as a gesture of goodwill to the Palestinians.

“This is a day of celebration for the Palestinian terror organizations, and a sad day for bereaved families and for the Israeli society,” Almagor head Meir Indor said.

He accused the Israeli government of “caving in to terror and covering this up with an array of PR stunts,” and vowed to “turn heaven and earth to fight against terror and to bring the terrorists to justice.”

The Israel Prisons Service publicized early Monday the list of the first 26 convicted terrorists who will be released as part of Israel’s confidence-building measures to help the restart of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

The list included 17 names of prisoners who had murdered Israelis, including Abu-Musa Salam Ali Atia of Fatah, who murdered Holocaust survivor Isaac Rotenberg in a Petah Tikvah construction site in 1994.

According to Almagor, an organization of terror victims’ families that has campaigned against the prisoner release, Rotenberg’s family perished in the Sobibor extermination camp during World War II. Rotenberg escaped and joined the partisans fighting the Nazis in the forests of Eastern Europe. He arrived in Israel in 1947, joined the IDF and fought in Israel’s Independence War on the Lebanese front.

A plasterer by trade, Rotenberg was attacked by Abu Musa and an accomplice at a construction site where all three men worked in March 1994. He sustained repeated blows to the neck with axes. His wounds induced a coma, and he died two days after the attack. He was survived by his brother and sister, who were also survivors of Sobibor, and by a wife and two children. Rotenberg was 67 when he died.

Rotenberg wasn’t the oldest victim of the prisoners who made it onto the list Sunday. Fatah member Ra’ai Ibrahim Salam Ali was jailed in 1994 for the murder of 79-year-old Moris Eisenstatt. Eisenstatt was killed with ax blows to the head while he sat on a public Kfar Saba bench reading a book.

Another prisoner, Salah Ibrahim Ahmad Mugdad, also of Fatah, was imprisoned in 1993 for killing 72-year-old Sirens Hotel security guard Israel Tenenbaum by beating him in the head with a steel rod.

According to Almagor, the Poland-born Tenenbaum had immigrated to Israel in 1957, at age 36, and settled in Moshav Ein Vered. He was an agricultural worker on the moshav, but was working as a night watchman at the hotel in 1993. Tenenbaum was 72 at the time of his death. He was survived by a wife, two children and four grandchildren.

Two of the prisoners, Abu Satta Ahmad Sa’id Aladdin and Abu Sita Talab Mahmad Ayman, were imprisoned in 1994 for the murder of David Dadi and Haim Weizman. After killing Dadi and Weizman as they slept in Weizman’s apartment, the attackers cut off their ears as proof of the killing.

Abdel Aal Sa’id Ouda Yusef was imprisoned in 1994 to a 22-year sentence for several grenade attacks, and for his part as an accomplice in the murder of Ian Sean Feinberg and the murder of Sami Ramadan.

Feinberg, a 30-year-old father of three, was a proponent of Palestinian economic development. He was killed by gunmen who stormed a business meeting in Gaza City which he attended in April 1993.

Also on the list was Kour Matwah Hamad Faiz of Fatah, imprisoned in 1985 after he was convicted of killing Menahem Dadon and Salomon Abukasis in 1983 and planning to murder then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Another two prisoners to be released, Fatah members Sualha Fazah Ahmed Husseini and Sualha Bad Almajed Mahmed Mahmed, were imprisoned for a stabbing attack on a crowded Ramat Gan bus, on the 66 line, in 1990. The two, together with a third accomplice, stabbed wildly at passengers, killing 24-year-old Baruch Heizler and wounding three young women. Heizler was named after his grandfather, who was killed during the Jordanian bombardment of the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem during the 1948 Independence War.

Sha’at Azat Shaban Ata was imprisoned in 1993 for helping to orchestrate the murder of 51-year-old Simcha Levi, a woman who made her living transporting Palestinian day laborers to work in Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. In March 1993, three of the women laborers were disguised male attackers, who beat and stabbed her to death.

Maslah Abdullah Salama Salma, a Hamas member likely to be sent to the Gaza Strip after his release, was imprisoned in 1993 for the brutal murder of Petah Tikvah convenience store owner Reuven David. Abdallah, together with an accomplice, entered David’s convenience store on May 20, 1991, bound David’s arms and legs and beat him to death, before locking the store and fleeing the scene. Born in Iraq in 1932, David was 59 at the time of his death, and was survived by a wife, three children and multiple grandchildren.

The remaining prisoners, in the order listed by the Prisons Service:

• Na’anish Na’if Abdal Jafer Samir, imprisoned in 1989 for the murder of Binyamin Meisner.

• Arsheed A’Hameed Yusef Yusef, imprisoned in 1993 for the murder of Nadal Rabu Ja’ab, Adnan Ajad Dib, Mufid Cana’an, Tawafiq Jaradat and Ibrahim Sa’id Ziwad.

• Al-Haaj Othman Amar Mustafa, imprisoned in 1989 for the murder of Steven Rosenfeld.

• Maklad Mahmoud Zaid Salah, imprisoned in 1993 for the murder of Yeshayahu Deutsch.

• Barbach Faiz Rajab Madhat, imprisoned in 1994 for the murder of Moshe Beker.

• Nashabat Jaabar Yusef Mahmed, imprisoned in 1990 for serving as an accessory to the murder of Amnon Pomerantz.

• Mortja Hasin Ghanam Samir, imprisoned in 1993 for the abduction, torture and murder of Samir Alsilawi, Khaled Malka, Nasser Aqila, Ali al Zaabot.

• Faraj Saleh al-Rimahi, imprisoned in 1992 for the murder of Avraham Kinstler.

• Mansour Omar Abdel Hafiz Asmat, imprisoned in 1993 as an accessory to the murder of Hayim Mizrahi.

• Asarka Mahmad Ahmad Khaled, imprisoned in 1991 for the murder of Annie Ley.

• Jandiya Yusef Radwan Nahad, imprisoned in 1989 for the murder of Zalman Shlein.

• Hamdiya Mahmoud Awed Muhammed, imprisoned in 1989 for the murder of Zalman Shlein.

• Abdel Nabi A-Wahab Gamal Jamil, imprisoned in 1992 for the murder of Shmuel Gersh.

• Ziwad Muhammed Taher Taher, imprisoned in 1993 for the murder of Avraham Cohen.

• Sabih Abed Hamed Borhan, imprisoned in 2001 for the murder of Jamil Muhammad Naim Sabih, Aisha Abdullah Haradin.

A special ministerial panel on Sunday approved the release of the prisoners. “In the wake of the government’s decision to renew diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and to authorize a ministerial panel for prisoner releases for the duration of the negotiations, the ministerial panel met this evening,” read a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office released after 11 p.m. Sunday.

Gila Molcho (C) holds the picture of her brother Ian Feinberg who was killed in 1993 by Palestinian militants. (Abir Sultan/EPA)

The father of an Israeli man who was knifed-to-death said he was dismayed that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to release a prisoner connected with his son’s slaying.

“I feel that the blood of my son is being abandoned,” Cyril Feinberg said on Monday. “We came to live in a Jewish state with moral values of Judaism and justice.”

Yusuf Abdel Al was sent to prison after being convicted of having prior information about an April 18, 1993, attack that ended in the death of Israeli lawyer Ian Feinberg, Cyril Feinberg’s son, in Gaza.

Feinberg, a 30-year-old married father of three, was working with an NGO funding Palestinian house-building and had been active in international Zionist youth organization Bnei Akiva, according to Israel’s Almagor Terror Victims Association.

Abdel-Al is among 26 Palestinian prisoners set to be released in the next few days as part of a deal tied to upcoming peace talks. They will be the first of 104 prisoners slated to be let go during the course of the U.S.-backed negotiations.

Speaking from Al Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, Abdel Al’s sister Muftiyeh said her family was surprised and happy with the decision to release her brother.

“I think I might faint when I see him,” she said. “The last time I saw him was about 13 years ago when I visited him in prison. Ever since, no one else from the family is allowed to visit.”

The three Palestinians convicted in the killing of Feinberg were released as part of the last major prisoner swap deal – when 1,027 Palestinians were let go in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, on Oct. 18, 2011.

Feinberg’s sister, Gila Molcho, told NBC News Monday that the family did not protest the previous release since it was in order to achieve Shalit’s freedom – he had been held by Hamas for over five years. But now she said the family is angered by the release. “We are paying the price for nothing. That’s not a peace process,” said Molcho.

The list of prisoners set to be released this time also includes Abu-Musa Salam Ali Atia who killed Holocaust survivor Isaac Rotenberg in a Petah Tikvah construction site in 1994, The Times of Israel reported.

A panel of three cabinet ministers headed by Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and security and legal personnel made the decision to release the 26 late on Sunday. Families of Israelis victimized by the inmates’ attacks have 48 hours to appeal the decision, but based on past decisions, the court was unlikely to intervene, according to Reuters.

Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, welcomed the release but added that he was disappointed too.

“We expected to take part in choosing the names with the Israelis, but as usual the Israelis like to dictate to us,” he said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had demanded the release of these men, many held since before a 1993 interim peace deal with Israel, as a condition for agreeing to resume talks that broke down in 2010 in a dispute over Jewish settlement building.

Also on Sunday, Israel’s housing minister gave final approval for building nearly 1,200 new settlement apartments on lands the Palestinians want for their state, just three days before the talks on the borders of such a state were to begin in Jerusalem.