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The syndicated article below
was posted
on July 24, 2013 by JNS.org
Bereaved
families angered by plan to release Palestinian prisoners
(JNS.org)
Families of terror victims are harshly criticizing the Israeli government's
plan to release 85 Palestinians imprisoned prior to the 1993 Oslo Accords as a
goodwill gesture to the Palestinian Authority ahead of renewed peace talks.
Arnold
Roth—whose 15-year-old daughter, Malki, was murdered along with 14 others when
a suicide bomber struck the Sbarro pizza restaurant in downtown Jerusalem on
Aug. 9, 2001—told JNS.org that Israel “conceded to the U.S. administration,”
which “had to deliver this,” by agreeing to the prisoner release.
“From
the standpoint of simple negotiating theory, what Israel has done, even if
Israel never actually delivers, is a losing move,” Roth said. “Even if there
were a case for saying Israel ought to concede to a list of pre-negotiating
demands from the other side, freeing terrorists ought never to have been one of
them.”
Ahlam
Tamimi, a Palestinian woman who transported both the bomb and the bomber to the
Sbarro restaurant, was freed from prison in October 2011 as part of the deal in
which 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were exchanged for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli
soldier who spent more than five years in Hamas captivity.
“I
am emphatically not political, and it does not come naturally to me to be
speaking against something the government in its wisdom decided to do,” Roth
said. “But the idea to hand over murderers in order to prime some sort of
negotiating pump simply enrages me.”
Israel
Defense Forces Sgt. Avraham Bromberg died at 20 four days after being attacked
on his way home from a Golan Heights base by Karim Younis and his cousin Maher
Younis in November 1980, but Israeli President Shimon Peres commuted their
sentence in August 2012, making them eligible for parole in 2023. The
Palestinians now demand that the Younis cousins be included in the upcoming
prisoner release by Israel.
“It
is inconceivable that the state can ignore the bereaved families like this,”
said Bromberg’s son [TOW: We think this should be nephew], Avi, according to Israel Hayom. “President Peres and the
government are grateful to Abu-Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas) for the difficult concessions he agreed to for the sake of the
negotiations, and we will be left to pay the price. We didn’t even get a phone
call. The government’s conduct is a disgrace.”
[JNS is an independent, non-profit,
business resource and wire service covering Jewish news and Israel news for
Jewish media throughout the English-speaking world]
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