[Wednesday October 29, 2013] The Israeli government has announced that it intends to build additional 1500 units for Jewish settlers in the illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo, in occupied East Jerusalem. Abbas: “We never accepted the release of detainees in return for accepting Israel’s settlement activities”.The announcement came after Israel released 26 veteran Palestinian detainees, as part of diplomatic talks between Tel Aviv and the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas.
Israeli Military Radio has reported that Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Interior Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, made the decision.
The decision did not come as a surprise as Netanyahu and his coalition partners said that they would build more settlements in return for freeing Palestinian political prisoners, and alleged that President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to this formula.
It also comes to appease his fundamentalist coalition partners who are angered by the release of the veteran detainees.
Welcoming the released detainees in the central West Bank city of Ramallah, Abbas said that the claims and allegations that the Palestinian Authority accepted the release in return for not objecting to Israeli settlement activities, are false, and have no grounds.
“Settlements are illegitimate”, Abbas said, “Settlements are violations of International Law”.
Abbas also said that the P.A would continue to act on all levels to secure the release of every detainee held by Israel.
“There will never no agreements while even a single detainee is behind bars”, Abbas said, “We are determined to achieve this noble goal”.
