RAMALLAH, West Bank, August 16 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Israel's refusal to free more than a handful of Palestinian prisoners is like "an open wound" in the peace process which, if not treated, will have serious consequences, Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan said Saturday, August 16.

Speaking after a meeting with Hisham Abdelrazek, minister for prisoner affairs and a number of prisoners' families, Dahlan said Israel should learn from the experience of Northern Ireland about the importance of prisoner releases.

He was referring to the hundreds of both Protestant and Catholic prisoners, many of them jailed for security offences, who were granted clemency under terms of the April 1998 Good Friday peace accords.

"If Israel doesn't release the prisoners, it will lead to more complications in the peace process and will increase incitement among the Palestinian people," Dahlan warned.

Israel's refusal to release more than several hundreds out of an estimated 6,000 Palestinian prisoners has proved a stumbling block in the way of advancing the U.S.-backed peace roadmap.

Palestinian resistance groups have conditioned a three-month suspension of anti-Israeli attacks they declared on June 29 on the unconditional release of all the prisoners.

Deeds, Not Words

Commenting on Israel's decision to pull out of four West Bank cities over the next two weeks, Dahlan said he would "observe what happens on the ground because the honesty of this agreement lies in how it is implemented."

The withdrawals were agreed at talks between Dahlan and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz Friday, but Israeli sources would only confirm plans to pull out of two cities.

Dahlan Saturday stressed the importance of removing army checkpoints from the West Bank.

"Any withdrawal must also involve lifting checkpoints from around the cities to guarantee free movement for all the people," he said.

For his part, Palestinian MP Qadura Fares said that Dahlan and Mofaz had reached an agreement over a second thorny issue: how to deal with the Palestinians wanted by Israel, including those taking refugee in Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters.

"There is an agreement," he said, but refused to give further details.

Army radio reported late Friday that Dahlan had agreed to set up a mechanism for dealing with the wanted Palestinians, but there was no immediate confirmation of the report.

Senior Israeli and Palestinian officers prepared to meet Sunday to set a timetable for handing over responsibility for security in at least two towns and discuss two others, officials said.

An Israeli military source who asked not to be named told AFP that dates would be discussed for handing over the towns of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank and Jericho in the east.

The office of Dahlan confirmed the talks but said they would also cover Israeli pullbacks from the key town of Ramallah in the central West Bank and Tulkarem in the north.

Farce

Meanwhile, Palestinian groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, slammed an Israeli agreement to hand over control of four West Bank towns to Palestinian security forces as a "farce" Saturday.

"The Israeli army will redeploy around these towns, pretending to withdraw. It's a farce because Israel just wants to hide its aggression and continue building the wall," Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told Agence France-Presse (AFP), referring to the security fence being built by Israel across the West Bank.

"Israel is tricking the world into believing that its army is pulling out of Palestinian towns, as it has already tricked the world over the release of Palestinian prisoners," said Mohammad al-Hindi, leader of Islamic Jihad.

A spokesman for Dahlan said Israel would hand over control of Jericho, Ramallah, Qalqilya and Tulkarem to the Palestinian Authority in the next two weeks.

Israeli military sources, however, said that "for the moment" only the transfer of control of Jericho and Qalqilya would be discussed.

Seven of the eight main West Bank towns were reoccupied by Israel during successive incursions in 2002.

Jericho was surrounded by Israeli road blocks and suffered an incursion on August 6.

The Israelis handed over security control of parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Bethlehem seven weeks ago. 

Refugees’ Return

While security officials sought to make progress on the ground, a political row was brewing over the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, one of the thorniest and most sensitive issues in the peace process.

A new dispute erupted over the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, with the Jewish state categorically rejecting a Palestinian claim the prospect was guaranteed by a U.S.-backed peace roadmap launched in June.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said Friday in Beirut that the right was an integral part of an Arab peace initiative used as a reference point in the peace roadmap promoted by Washington.

But Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner reiterated that Israel would never let the refugees back in "under any circumstance and within any framework".

"The roadmap says absolutely nothing about the (refugees') right of return and this statement is detrimental" to its implementation, said Pazner.

The debate concerns an estimated four million Palestinians who fled or were chased from their homes after the state of Israel was born in 1948, and their descendants. most live in the Palestinian territories or Jordan.

Israelis, numbering about six million, nearly five million of them Jews, fear the character of their state would be threatened by a mass return of Palestinians.