Baku-APA. The Palestinians accused Israel Wednesday of trying to wreck peace talks with plans to build 1,500 new settler homes in east Jerusalem, hours after it freed 26 Palestinian prisoners, APA reports quoting AFP.
A spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeina, said the move "destroys the peace process and is a message to the international community that Israel is a country that does not respect international law".
Plans to build the homes in the city's Arab sector emerged in Israeli media almost immediately after Israel freed 21 prisoners to the West Bank and another five to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
Later a senior Israeli official confirmed to AFP that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Gideon Saar had "agreed on four building plans in Jerusalem".
The sequence was almost a mirror image of August 13, when a first tranche of 26 prisoners was freed and Israel announced construction of more than 2,000 new settler homes, mostly in east Jerusalem.
The Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, called on Abbas's western-backed Palestinian Authority to break off the talks, saying they encouraged Israeli settlement.
"It is... the PA's negotiations with the occupation that are now providing (Israel) with a cover for these crimes," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.
And Jordan condemned Israel's settlement plan, with government spokesman Mohammed Momeni saying "it is a direct threat to the peace process."
View gallery."A map locating the east Jerusalem settlement of Ramat …
A map locating the east Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo, where Israel is planning to build 1,50 …
Celebrations broke out in the West Bank and Gaza to welcome home the prisoners, who were tasting freedom for the first time in 20 years or more.
Tearful reunion with relatives
In the West Bank there were tearful reunions and a formal ceremony held at the presidential compound in Ramallah attended by thousands of cheering people. Many ex-prisoners were carried through the crowds on people's shoulders.
"There will be no (peace) agreement if so much as one Palestinian prisoner remains behind bars," Abbas said, referring to the 5,000 or so inmates still held by Israel.
In the northern West Bank village of Burqa, Muayyad Hijjeh, 46, arrived home at 3:30 am (0130 GMT) after serving more than 21 years of a multiple life sentence for the May 1992 killing of an Israeli security guard in the Red Sea resort of Eilat.
Despite the late hour, dozens of locals came onto the streets decked with flags to greet the man they call "the hero of Eilat."
"This is the happiest moment of my life" Hijjeh told AFP. "I feel like someone who was lost in the desert for a really long time and just found water."
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