ACCORDING to a Reuters report, Israel is to release 26 Palestinian prisoners in the second stage of a deal brokered by the United States in July that brought a resumption of peace talks.

Israel said in August it would free 104 inmates in four stages as negotiations resumed after a near three-year hiatus, following a dispute over Jewish settlement construction in land Palestinians seek for a state.
The issue of thousands of prisoners held by Israel is highly emotive for Palestinians who welcome the inmates home as heroes after being jailed for more than 20 years for attacks on Israelis, and highly divisive inside Israel.
Far-right allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were deeply critical of the move after the cabinet rejected their proposal earlier on Sunday to approve legislation that would prevent further such prisoner releases from taking place.
Housing Minister Uri Ariel, of the pro-settler Jewish Home party that sponsored the thwarted bill, said in several television interviews that freeing prisoners charged with having attacked or killed Israelis “doesn’t contribute to peace, and only leads to more terrorism”.
Israel’s chief negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, responded in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 television that Ariel’s party “doesn’t want negotiations”, adding: “If they have another solution, let them tell us what it is.”
Mr. Livini is quite correct because indeed ther are both internal and external forces who do not want a peaceful resolution of the decades-long conflict
According to Ariel, freeing prisoners who killed Israelis does not contribute to peace but only leads to more terrorism. What he should tell the world is whether in a war only one side kills and furthermore how many Israelis are in jail for slaughtering hundreds of innocent unarmed Palestinians, including women and children.
What have characterised the Palestinian/Israeli conflict since its inception have been gross double standards with respect to atrocities, because when Palestinians kill Israelis, and often in self-defence, it is dubbed by Israel and its powerful western allies as terrorism, but when Israel slaughters innocent Palestinians it is not.
In addition, Israel and its western allies are quick to condemn killings by Palestinians but are pretty silent when the shoe is on the other foot.
There could never be a lasting peace in the Middle East if the issue of the Palestinians having a right to a homeland is not permanently resolved; and it could be resolved if the west insists Israel recognises the right of the Palestinians to a homeland.
But the matter is not as simple as that, because western forces, particularly the US, consider their interests as being paramount to that of the Palestinian people. As long as such an inflexible position is held on to there will not be a resolution of this age-old conflict which will continue to ravage the people of the Middle East.
An objective thinker who has the interest of humanity at heart will agree that the best way to resolve the conflict is through peaceful negotiations and acceptance of the right of the Palestinians to a homeland.