Israel released more than 250 Palestinian prisoners on Friday as part of a US-backed deal to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas Islamists took over the Gaza Strip last month.
The prisoners, who were mostly members of Abbas’s secular Fatah faction, arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah where they were greeted by Abbas and reunited with family members. “You cannot imagine how happy we are that you came back to us,” Abbas told a crowd of about 3,000 at the presidential compound. “But our happiness is missing something because we want all 11,000 prisoners to return to their families.” |