Move prompted by Palestinian leader's
attempt to join international conventions, says spokesperson for justice
minister. Israel has announced that it will not release the fourth batch of
Palestinian prisoners because of renewed Palestinian efforts to join
international organisations.
A spokesman for Tzipi Livni, Israel's
justice minister and the government's chief negotiator, said on Thursday that
the Israeli government had been working to finalise an agreement to free the
prisoners when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed letters of accession
to 15 international conventions.
Abbas said it was a response to
Israel's failure to release prisoners as promised. Livni said the prisoner
release was tied to the Palestinians avoiding unilateral moves, adding that the
"new conditions were established and Israel cannot release the fourth
batch of prisoners".
Israel had promised to free 104
veteran Palestinian prisoners in four tranches, and in exchange, Ramallah
pledged to freeze all moves to seek membership in UN organisations until April
2014.
But a crisis erupted at the weekend
when Israel refused to release the final 26 prisoners, enraging the
Palestinians who on Tuesday responded by resuming their approach to
international agencies.
Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker,
reporting from Jerusalem, said: "It's almost like watching a game of
ping-pong. Lipni said they [Israel] would apply sanctions if they
[Palestinians] went to the UN.
"The Palestinians said, if you
do that we will sue you for war crimes. The language is not conducive to talks.
We have not had official confirmation that the talks are over, but things are
not going well.
"We have seen peace talks come
and go. All of these are just talks about talks, talking about a framework.
No-one has sat down and discussed the future of Jerusalem. It is very difficult
to see how this will ever be solved."
US not informed
The United States has criticised
"unhelpful, unilateral actions" by both sides and Secretary of State
John Kerry sought on Thursday to cast the crisis in a more hopeful light,
telling reporters while visiting Algeria that the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue
"remains open".
During the negotiators' meeting
"there was progress made in narrowing some of the questions that have
arisen as a result of the last few days but there is still a gap and that gap
will have to be closed and closed fairly soon," Kerry said.
In Washington, State Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf said that US officials "haven't been informed of
any such decision" by the Israelis to call off the planned release.
The stalemate comes as Avigdor
Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, prepares to fly to the US on Friday to
meet Kerry, who earlier this week rushed to the Middle East in a surprise visit
to rescue the peace talks.
Kerry has been conducting more than a
year of intensive shuttle diplomacy trying to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Source: Al-jazeera.net
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