Israel Selects 500 Prisoners to Be Released

Israel’s Cabinet on Sunday approved a list of 500 Palestinian prisoners to be freed in keeping with commitments made at last week’s summit in Egypt.

The group represents more than half of the 900 prisoners Israel has agreed to release. They are to be freed in a week or so. The remaining 400 are to be freed in the spring.

None of the 500 was involved in attacks on Israelis, a key criterion for previous releases. Most are in the last third of their sentences.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suggested in a newspaper interview last week that future releases might include those with “blood on their hands” as long as the Palestinians made good on their commitment to crack down on armed groups and Israel’s planned withdrawal from the Gaza Strip went smoothly.

The next round of releases is to be coordinated with Palestinian officials under agreements reached at the summit.

The Palestinians want Israel to release most or all of the 8,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Securing freedom for a large number of prisoners, including high-profile Palestinians who have been connected to attacks on Israelis, would boost public backing for newly elected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Sunday’s Cabinet action was one of several steps aimed at making good on promised Israeli gestures toward the Palestinians. Officials from the two sides also were discussing arrangements for Israel’s plan to yield security responsibility for Jericho, the first of five West Bank towns Israel had agreed to turn over to Palestinian forces.

The Jericho handoff is to occur this week. Transfer of a second town, still to be determined, may take place days after.

In another move, the Israeli military said it would turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinian militants killed in Gaza last year. The militants had carried out attacks or were attempting to when they were killed, the army said. The hand-over was to take place today.

The emerging conciliation with the Palestinians comes amid growing worry among Israeli officials that right-wing Jewish extremists may resort to violence to block Sharon’s plan to evacuate Jewish settlements in Gaza and a remote part of the West Bank this year.

In recent days, angry mobs have accosted Education Minister Limor Livnat and Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in public. Neither was injured.

Other Cabinet ministers say they have received letters threatening them and their family members. Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit, a supporter of the withdrawal plan who will oversee the compensation of settlers removed from their homes, said one letter, handwritten and unsigned, warned: “You’re going to get to see your kids’ funerals.”

The harsh language and imagery surrounding the debate over the pullout has drawn comparisons to the vitriolic climate preceding the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Rabin was gunned down at a Tel Aviv rally by a nationalist zealot who opposed an interim peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Sharon has been the main focus of increasingly virulent slogans, fueling fears that radicals may try to assassinate him. Fliers depict Sharon wearing a Stalinist uniform, and graffiti have obliquely referred to him and his supporters as “traitors.”

“Wake up before it is too late,” Rabin’s daughter, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, wrote Sunday in the country’s largest-circulation newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. “If we don’t do enough now to stop the deterioration, we once again will see the terrible spectacle of a prime minister assassinated.”

Security around Sharon intensified months ago over concerns that extremists opposed to the withdrawal might target him. Security officials are now weighing steps to improve protection for other ranking officials.

Sharon urged Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Atty. Gen. Menachem Mazuz to come up with practical measures to thwart further threats and incitement. This weekend, Mazuz ordered police to crack down in cases of threats against public figures.

Mainstream settler leaders have promised disobedience to block the withdrawal, but said they would use only nonviolent methods.

Right-wing activists said assessments of potential violence had been exaggerated to muzzle foes of the pullout.

But Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who served under Rabin a decade ago and recalled trying to warn him of violence, said Israeli authorities so far had been “light-headed” about the problem.

Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio: “The moment we say, ‘This is the limit -- we cannot accept an attack on someone in uniform, on the state, this is it,’ then you know that you live in a state and not in militia land.”