Israel Decides to Release 300 More Muslim Prisoners

Israel’s “inner Cabinet” of 10 senior government ministers Monday approved the release within 48 hours of about 300 of the 735 Lebanese prisoners whose freedom was demanded by the hijackers of TWA Flight 847, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin confirmed.

However, Rabin and other government sources denied any linkage between the decision and Sunday’s release of the TWA hostages. And they said that the remaining prisoners--most of them Shia Muslims--at Israel’s Atlit military detention facility will be freed as the security situation in southern Lebanon permits.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres praised President Reagan’s handling of the hostage crisis. “We admire the way the American Administration and the American President handled this very, very complicated matter,” he said.

He said he is happy that the hostages have left “the uncertain land of Lebanon” and added that “all of us will continue to confront the danger of terrorism and terrorists in a determined way.”

A senior Israeli defense source said the senior Cabinet ministers set no deadline Monday for completing the release of the Atlit prisoners, who were transferred across the border last April 2 when the Israeli army evacuated its detention camp in Ansar, Lebanon.

Captured in ‘Iron Fist’

Most of the Atlit detainees were captured earlier this year during Israel’s “Operation Iron Fist” retaliatory raids in southern Lebanon against Shia Muslim villages suspected of sheltering guerrillas who were attacking Israeli troops in the region. Israel has said from the beginning that the Lebanese captives would be kept here only temporarily.

Israeli law limits their confinement without formal charges to three months, which would mean the prisoners would have to be released today. However, the defense source said the detention orders were being renewed for another three months Monday.

The Israeli press, meanwhile, reported that all the Atlit prisoners are expected to be returned to southern Lebanon by the middle of the month.

Abba Eban, chairman of the Israeli Parliament’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee, said he favors freeing all 735 prisoners as soon as possible.

‘Banish the Lebanese War’

“I think the general line should be that we should get rid of any vestige that reminds us of the nightmare of the Lebanese war,” Eban said in an interview with Israel radio. “We’ve got to banish the Lebanese war, wipe it out of our minds, banish it from our consciousness. It is by far the least successful enterprise in modern Jewish history, and therefore anything that reminds us of it should be liquidated as soon as possible.”

Israeli officials want to see the remaining Atlit prisoners released in such a way as to minimize the appearance of any connection with the TWA hostage incident.

Thus, Rabin stressed during a speech opening an international conference on terrorism at Tel Aviv University on Monday night that the 300 prisoners to be freed later this week are those who were originally slated to be released in early June, before the hijacking.

The June release was first postponed because of a clash between U.N. peacekeeping troops and the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army militia. Then, on June 14, two Shia Muslims hijacked TWA Flight 847.

Danger of Linkage

If Israel had agreed to link the release of the American hostages with freedom for its Muslim prisoners, it would open itself to the danger of more terrorist hijackings, Rabin said.

While denying any linkage, Israeli officials have acknowledged that there was an “understanding” with the United States that once the TWA hostages were released, Israel would be enabled to resume its program of gradually freeing the Atlit detainees.

Israel originally transferred 1,168 prisoners from Ansar to Atlit last April. Subsequently, it captured and transferred 202 more. Of the total, 635 have already been freed in five previous releases. Four of those releases predated the TWA hijacking. The last was on June 24, when Israel freed 31 of the prisoners as a test of the hijackers’ intentions.