Israel began freeing 198 Palestinian prisoners today, saying it hoped the release would bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the US -backed pursuit of a peace deal.
The longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody, Said al-Atabeh, 57, of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is among those being released.
Atabeh was arrested in 1977 and sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of involvement in bombings that killed an Israeli woman and wounded dozens of people.
The 194 men and four women were to receive a hero's welcome at a Palestinan Authority ceremony in Ramallah after being transported by bus from Ofer prison to the Beitunya checkpoint outside the West Bank city.
Before boarding Palestinian buses outside the jail, several of the prisoners knelt on the ground and touched their heads to the pavement in a gesture of thanksgiving.
Initially 199 prisoners had been slated to go free. But one was kept at the jail over a separate criminal charge, Israeli Prison Services spokesman Yaron Zamir said.
Some 11,000 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons and securing their release is a highly emotive issue in Palestinian society. The release got under way just hours before the planned arrival in Israel of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whowill try to spur progress towards a peace deal that Washington says it still hopes to achieve by year's end.
A release list published by the Israel Prisons Service also included Mohammad Abu Ali, 52, who was jailed for life in 1980 for killing an Israeli in Hebron in the occupied West Bank.
Abu Ali received a second life term for the jailhouse killing of a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israeli authorities. Though in prison, he was elected to the Palestinian parliament in 2006.
Several Israeli cabinet ministers had opposed freeing Palestinians "with blood on their hands", an Israeli term for attacks that caused Israeli casualties, but a ministerial committee approved the list a week ago.
Reuters