Erekat letter to Israel envoy protests MP detentions

PLO official Saeb Erekat gave Israeli negotiator Yitzhak Molcho a letter protesting Israel's detention of Palestinian MPs from the West Bank, officials said on Sunday. The officials met in Jordan on Saturday, in the fourth round of talks called by the international Quartet to restart negotiations. But the letter said Israel's detention of parliament speaker Aziz Dweik and MP Khaled Tafish in recent days was meddling in Palestine's internal affairs, according to a Palestinian official speaking on condition of anonymity. It accused Israel of trying to stop an upcoming meeting of the Palestinian Legislative Council, slated for next month under the reconciliation process between Fatah and Hamas. The parliament suspended sessions after violent confrontation broke out between the factions when Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006, splitting the West Bank and Gaza Strip into separate governments the following year. The letter, delivered in the presence of Jordanian officials overseeing the talks, called for the release of all Palestinian lawmakers in Israeli jail, including Fatah leader Marwan Barghouthi and PFLP head Ahmed Saadat. According to recent figures by prisoners' rights group Addameer, Israel holds 25 Palestinian parliamentarians in jail. The talks in Jordan began on Jan. 3 and followed a long break in negotiations after President Mahmoud Abbas suspended contacts 15 months ago over Israel's expansion of Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.The "Quartet" of international peace mediators -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- wants the two sides to state their positions on the borders and security arrangements of a future "two-state solution" by Jan. 26 to help open the door to a resumption of full negotiations. US officials have signaled that the Jan. 26 target date for the two sides to exchange proposals could slide. The PLO entered the closed-door talks despite opposition from factions, who point to the failure of decades of negotiations with Israel alongside the expansion of illegal settlements.