Israel split over calls to release jailed Palestinian leader

[oberliner]

A fierce debate has erupted among senior Israeli politicians over whether the jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti – regarded by some Israelis as an "arch-terrorist" and by others as the only man who can deliver a lasting peace – should be released from prison after his election to Fatah's key central committee.

Barghouti, one of the most high-profile leaders of the second intifada, was arrested in 2002 and sentenced two years later to five life terms in an Israeli prison for murders that he denies.

As it became clear that Barghouti had been elected to the highest decision-making body of Fatah, the movement once associated with the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, a number of ministers and members of the Israeli Knesset called for Barghouti's release as part of a prisoner swap for the abducted soldier Gilad Schalit, who is being held by Fatah's Islamist rival Hamas.

Among those leading the calls were Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the national infrastructure minister and a former defence minister, and his Labour colleague Avishay Braverman, the minister for minorities.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/12/marwan-barghouti-israel-release-row