As the Jerusalem Post informs us:
Government okays release of second group of 26 Palestinian prisoners for peace talksIPS to publish names of pre-Oslo prisoners later Sunday night after bereaved families are notified; public has 48 hours to appeal release; after heated row, ministers nix bill seeking to ban future releases.
There has been some verbal contretemps between the Bayit Yehudi party and the Yesh Atid party. Those are the regular problems of coalition politics.
But what did catch my attention was this sentence in the Government''s official statemnt distributed just now:
It should be emphasized that any prisoner who resumes hostile activity will be returned to serve the remainder of his sentence.
Why emphasized? Isn''t that Standard Operating Procedure for democracies and states with an independent judicial system? A criminal should naturally expected to be hunted down and caught and brought before a court of law and, if found guilty, sentenced and incarcerated.
What is so necessary to stress that they will be returned to jail? That is the given. Maybe we should presume that it will be a lot harder to track them down in the PA and therefore, despite this difficulty, Israel will pursue them nevertheless?
Or, that the government should be paying more attention that too many others, perhaps younger terrorists, will be encouraged to go out to kill Jews because of the lenient attitude Israel''s governments have expressed over the decades?
In the light of the recent increased violence against Jews, is there anything, perhaps, that needs emphasizing to the government?
But more fundamental is this, reported in the JPost:
Netanyahu on Palestinian prisoner release: Promises must be keptPrime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu refrained Sunday from issuing a public statement about the impending release of Palestinian security prisoners, but told ministers from his Likud party that when it comes to this issue, "promises must be kept."