{{Israel on Tuesday began releasing 26 Palestinian political prisoners, on the eve of renewed Mideast peace talks that have faced challenges even before they started.}}<\/p>\n
Buses carrying the prisoners and bound for the Palestinian territories left the Ayalon
\njail in central Israel late Tuesday, according to the Israeli prison service.<\/p>\n
The prisoners were expected to receive a hero\u2019s welcome in the West Bank and Gaza.<\/p>\n
The release of the prisoners, most of whom were jailed in connection to deadly attacks, has been painful for some Israelis. They were freed late at night to prevent a media spectacle.<\/p>\n
The move was part of an agreement brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry to get Israel and the Palestinians back to the peace table after a five-year freeze in negotiations.<\/p>\n
In all, 104 Palestinian convicts are to be released in four batches, although their freedom is contingent on progress of the talks that get underway in Jerusalem on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
agencies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Israel on Tuesday began releasing 26 Palestinian political prisoners, on the eve of renewed Mideast peace talks that have faced challenges even before they started.}} Buses carrying the prisoners and bound for the Palestinian territories left the Ayalon jail in central Israel late Tuesday, according to the Israeli prison service. The prisoners were expected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9708"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9708"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}