(Guardian) Details of the latest Middle East peace plan began to emerge today, hours after John Kerry announced that he had brokered an agreement that is likely to lead to fresh talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The most significant concession appears to be a promise by Israel to release a number of high-ranking Palestinian political prisoners, many of whom have been behind bars for decades. Prisoner releases have been a longstanding demand of the Palestinian leadership.
“There will be some release of prisoners,” Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s hawkish strategic affairs minister, told Israel Radio. “I don’t want to give numbers but there will be heavyweight prisoners who have been in jail for tens of years.” It is understood that the prisoners will be released in stages.
Mr Steinitz’s comments came less than 24 hours after Mr Kerry said that the two sides had agreed to restart negotiations for the first time since 2010. While the deal was hailed in some quarters as a resumption of direct talks, it appears to fall some way short of that.
Speaking in the Jordanian capital, Amman, on Friday evening, Mr Kerry said that the two sides had “reached an agreement that establishes a basis for direct final-status negotiations”, but he added that a deal is “still in the process of being formalised”. Mr Kerry has spent four months trying to get the two sides back around the table.
The veteran Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israel’s interior minister, Tzipi Livni, who is responsible for negotiations with the Palestinians, are due in Washington this week, although it could be a number of weeks before face-to-face talks begin.
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