The Palestine Liberation Organization is demanding the immediate release from jail of an additional 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Arab rejectionists, meanwhile, are calling for stepped-up attacks against Istrael.
The Palestinian demand for the release of additional prisoners came after Israel released more than 600 Palestinians on Monday in a move designed to build Palestinian support for the self-rule accord that Israel and the PLO signed Sept. 13.
The demand, according to Israel Army Radio, was put forward as talks between the two sides resumed Tuesday at the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Taba.
In Israel and the territories, meanwhile, a relaxation of the six-month-old closure of the territories went into effect Tuesday.
Israeli checkpoints are now permitting Palestinian women — as well as men under the age of 16 and older than 50 — to enter Israel without permits.
A hard-line Palestinian faction, however, has called for redoubled efforts to “explode” the Israel-PLO accord.
George Habash, leader of the Damascus-based popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, called Tuesday for additional acts of terrorism against Israel. The PFLP is part of a 10-member Arab coalition pledged to destroy the Israeli-PLO peace process.
Speaking on Hezbollah Radio in Lebanon, Habash urged an increase in attacks on Israel, citing as an example to be emulated an abortive attempt to infiltrate Israel from the sea on Oct. 9.
In that incident, an Israeli patrol boat shot and killed a terrorist aboard a jet ski that was later found to be filled with weapons. The terrorist had been headed for the beach at Nahariya in an effort to attack Israeli vacationers.
Habash said in his broadcast that an increase in such attacks was clearly ” the best way to explode” the Israel-PLO accord.
NONE WITH ‘BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS’
The third round of talks in Taba began with a private meeting between the two chief negotiators, Maj. Gen. Amnon Shahak, Israel’s deputy chief of staff, and Nabil Sha’ath, a senior adviser to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.
The delegates were scheduled to break into subcommittees that would deal with several issues: the formation of a Palestinian police force; determining the precise borders of the autonomous area, particularly in the West Bank town of Jericho, an area whose precise boundaries are being hotly contested; and the method for transferring authority to the Palestinian after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
To underscore their concerns about the further release of prisoners, the Palestinians added a new member, Salim al-Zeri, to their delegation.
Zeri, a commander in Arafat’s Al Fatah faction and Israel’s longest-held prisoner, was released Oct. 19 after 23 years in an Israeli jail.
Zeri said he looked forward to a general release of Palestinian prisoners so that “every home in the West Bank and Gaza should share in the joy of peace.”
He said the prisoners released Monday were mainly youngsters and elderly men whose terms of imprisonment were close to completion.
Israeli source have said Israel will discuss new criteria for release, but men “with blood on their hands” would not be released, at least for the present.
Significantly, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin refused on Monday, at a meeting of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, to give an explicit commitment that this distinction would remain in effect permanently.
His refusal provoked a storm of criticism from members of the opposition, who said it implied that killers would shortly be out on the streets again as free men.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
