Israel released 429 Palestinian prisoners on Monday to bolster President Mahmoud Abbas after a U.S.-sponsored conference last week on Palestinian statehood, Israeli officials said. The prisoners, most of whom belong to Abbas’s secular Fatah movement, were bussed from the desert prison of Kitsiyot to Israel’s borders with the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank. There are nearly 11,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The Jewish state says most are there for involvement in militant groups that have staged attacks against it. Many of those who went free voiced concern for comrades still behind bars. “I urge Abu Mazen (Abbas) to make the prisoner issue a priority,” said ex-inmate Ala al-Namla, who was borne away on friends’ shoulders as he arrived in Gaza through Erez terminal. Full Story
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