Haneya calls on Palestinians to free prisoners in Israeli jails

The deposed Hamas Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haneya on Tuesday called on the Palestinian factions " to use all possible means to free thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails."

Haneya, who joined a gathering which declared the year 2010 as the year of the Palestinian prisoners, told reporters that the efforts of his government "won't stop to free our Palestinian prisoners."

"The government's activities to work on freeing the Palestinian prisoners won't be only internal; we also have a plan to enlarge our efforts to activate the prisoners' issue in the Arab and Islamic worlds."

Israel is detaining more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in its jails, saying that they are involved in carrying out attacks against Israel.

Haneya called on the international community to be concerned about thousands of prisoners, who are imprisoned in Israeli jails, the same as they are concerned about the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in Gaza.

Egypt and Germany are sponsoring indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel to free Shalit, who has been in captivity since June 2006, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

However, the sponsors' efforts have not achieved any breakthrough, due to the Israeli rejection to free prisoners Hamas wanted to be release, mainly including top political leaders and militants.

Source: Xinhua