“We hope the whole world understand how fake the Israeli message was in over reporting the release of Palestinian prisoners on Wednesday,” said Palestinian minister of security affairs, Mohammad Dahlan, reacting to the release. He noted that a considerable number of those released were supposed to be set free in one or two months and as such their early release was meaningless and under no circumstances could be seen as part of the Israeli commitments to the roadmap.

Dahlan said that Israel has spoken a lot in the past few weeks on the release of prisoners to the extent that whoever heard Israeli officials got the impression that Israel was about to release thousands of Palestinian inmates incarcerated behind Israeli bars. “But the releases on Wednesday,” he said, “show how insincere Israel is in moving the peace process forward.” Israel, said Dahlan, behaves as if it is making the Palestinians a big favor while releasing prisoners is an essential step that is vital for pushing the peace process forward.

Many Palestinians, said Dahlan, had grasped their breath over the past month or so waiting for those prisoners to go out of Israel jails and they were all awaiting a new era of genuine implementation by Israel of the roadmap requirements for peace. “But the way and the figures with which Israel released the prisoners unmask the fake claims made by Israel and show that the Sharon government is not interested in peace at all and on the contrary is looking for chances to push the Palestinians toward an internal fighting that benefits no one except for Sharon and his plan to stay in power without having to pay any price for peace.

The Palestinian minister said that for Sharon, a political settlement is a burden that the Israeli prime minister has no intention whatsoever to shoulder because he is still very loyal to his right wing ideologies despite all the hollow statements he made about painful concessions his government, he said, was ready to give in return for peace.

Dahlan, however, noted that the PNA in principal welcomes every release of any prisoner out of Israeli jails but would like in the same time to insist that a certain set of priorities has to be honored because there are Palestinian prisoners and freedom fighters who have already spent long years in jail and have not been released since the signing of the Oslo Accords.