Joyous Palestinians Greet Freed Prisoners : Mideast: With the release, Israel honors first step of peace plan.

Sentenced to seven life terms in prison, Fehti Kadoura-Saleh stepped into newfound freedom Thursday, embraced friends and relatives he had not seen for years and struggled to reconcile his violent past with today’s talk of peace.

Kadoura-Saleh was one of 199 Palestinians released from Israeli jails just after dawn Thursday in the first tangible result of the interim peace accord signed early this week by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Jubilant crowds of ululating women and weeping men gathered to greet the prisoners in the Gaza Strip and throughout the West Bank. They were celebrating the return of men many Israelis view as terrorists but Palestinians regard as heroes of their struggle for a homeland.

At the same time, many of those released, fighters whose acts of violence against Israelis or Palestinian collaborators earned them years in prison, were at pains to note that the times--and the terms of their struggle--have changed.

“The language of war is over,” Omran Hussein, 33, who served nearly 14 years for wounding seven Israeli soldiers, said as he sat in the shaded patio of his home in a West Bank refugee camp. “We are in the stage of peace.”

The release of Palestinian prisoners is the first concrete evidence that the long-stalled peace process is back on track, and it breathes life into Barak’s commitment to reach a final settlement of the decades-old conflict within a year. It is to be followed, perhaps as early as today, by the transfer of several more slivers of West Bank land to partial Palestinian control, the first stage of redeployments promised under an agreement signed Sunday at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik.

On Monday, the anniversary of the 1993 signing of the landmark Oslo agreement, the two sides will formally reopen negotiations aimed at producing a blueprint for a permanent peace accord by February and the deal itself by next September. And early next month, in steps dictated by the recent agreement, Israel is scheduled to release 150 more prisoners. (Israel had agreed to release 200 Palestinians on Thursday, but news reports said one prisoner refused to go.)

It was the issue of prisoners, emotion-charged for both sides, that delayed the latest accord for several days. Negotiators struggled to reconcile different perceptions of a shared history. Palestinians see the prisoners as patriots, soldiers who should be freed at the war’s end; Israelis like Dov Kalmanovitz see them as violent criminals.

The 42-year-old Kalmanovitz bears disfiguring scars on his face and hands from burns he suffered when Palestinians tossed a Molotov cocktail into his car as he drove through the West Bank in January 1988. On Thursday, he came, alone, to the Ofer military checkpoint near Ramallah, where 50 prisoners were freed, to stage a personal protest.

“I don’t think this [release] should go together with peace,” Kalmanovitz said quietly. “Why are we forgiving these men? Israel made peace with Germany, but you don’t forgive the Nazis.”

After arduous negotiations, Israel opted to release only those prisoners who had injured Israelis or killed Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. It did not free anyone who had killed an Israeli, carried out operations since the beginning of the peace process in 1993, or who belongs to a militant Islamic group still opposed to peace.

Just after sunrise, eight buses carrying the prisoners left two jails in the south of Israel, heading for checkpoints at the entrances to the Gaza Strip and Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank.

At the Nahal Oz checkpoint on the eastern edge of the Gaza Strip, a military bagpipe band played songs of celebration. At the Ramallah military headquarters, prisoners danced, hoisted their children into the air and hugged their wives, comrades and mothers.

Kadoura-Saleh, 44, and his 33-year-old brother Sadi were among the first group freed at Gaza.

Jailed since 1991, they were part of the military wing of the hard-line Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and specialized in killing Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.

The pair, from the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, said they were responsible for the deaths of seven men and were sentenced to one life term per killing.

“I was proud of what I did at the time,” Fehti Kadoura-Saleh said. “It was part of the struggle against the occupation and against those who collaborated with the occupier. I don’t think any nation in the world can accept being occupied.

“Of course, the means of the struggle have changed,” he said softly. “Every phase of a struggle has its own means and shape. At the time, it was necessary to kill those people. Every stage is different, and today there is a political process.

“But if that process does not bring us our rights, other options will have to be used.”

Ibrahim Fawzi Kurd, 50, of the Gaza town of Sheikh Radwan, spent 11 years and four months in jail for carrying out bombings in Gaza and Israel that wounded 10 Israelis.

“I am not ashamed of what I did. It was for my people, and I am proud of it,” said Kurd, whose son Ziad is a star on the Palestinians’ fledgling soccer team. “They occupied my land, I didn’t occupy theirs. But I do not repeat it now.”

At the Jalazoun refugee camp near Ramallah, Hussein said he was a member of Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization faction led by Arafat, when he and several others planted explosives aimed at killing and wounding Israeli soldiers. Arrested in 1986, he served two-thirds of a 21-year sentence.

Now, though, “I’m ready to look at Israelis as neighbors and to live with them in coexistence, as long as I get my rights,” he said. He defined those rights as Palestinian statehood and a comprehensive, just peace.

Under a heavily laden grapevine not far from the men, Hussein’s 80-year-old mother, Aisha, celebrated. “I grabbed him and I was dancing like crazy and I was crying,” she said, wiping her eyes once more. “This is a gift from God.”

“But it’s not a gift from Israel,” interjected her 27-year-old niece, Souhad. “We won’t say thank you to Israel.”

Trounson reported from the West Bank and Wilkinson from the Gaza Strip.