Israel released 256 Palestinian prisoners on Friday, as part of a US-backed deal to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after Hamas Islamists took over the Gaza Strip last month.

The prisoners, who were mostly members of Mr Abbas’s secular Fatah faction, arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where they were greeted by him and reunited with family members.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has described his decision to free the prisoners, most of them with relatively short sentences left to run, as a goodwill gesture to bolster Mr Abbas’s new government. An Israeli Prisons Service spokesman said that the prisoners released had at least one year left to their sentence. Mr Olmert said he would not release prisoners with “blood on their hands”. More than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are still held by Israel.

Apart from the release of prisoners, Israel has agreed to stop hunting dozens of militants loyal mainly to Fatah groups like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, if they hand  over weapons and join formal security forces.
Hamas, shunned by Israel and western powers for refusing to renounce violence against the Jewish state, routed Fatah forces in Gaza last month, prompting Mr Abbas to dismiss the government it led and  install a new administration in the larger West Bank.

The schism between the two Palestinian territories had left hopes for establishing a state in disarray. But an eagerness in the west to marginalise Hamas, which has cultivated friendly ties with Iran and Syria, has brought about an end to sanctions on Mr Abbas’s new government, as well as a number of concessions from Israel.

US President George Bush announced this week that he was keen on holding a West Asia peace conference. US Secretary of State Gondoleeza Rice will visit the area shortly to try to boost support for the conference.
On Thursday, the quartet of international powers mediating in West Asia reaffirmed its support for Abbas and US-sponsored talks to try to revive a peace process that had almost died after Hamas won parliamentary elections last year, prompting crippling economic sanctions on the Palestinians.

The United Nations, European Union and Russia, meeting in Lisbon with Ms Rice, threw their weight behind Mr Bush’s new plan to revive peace moves and pledged support for Palestinians, including those under Hamas rule in Gaza.

“Just imagine for a moment if this process were moving forward again, just think how much hope there would be,” said Tony Blair, the former British prime minister named last month as the quartet's envoy to West Asia.
“I hope I can offer something to bring about a solution to this issue that is of such fundamental importance to the world”, he added.

Mr Blair will visit Jerusalem and Ramallah next week and report back to the quartet on his strategy of reforms for the Palestinians in September, a statement said. 

It is years since Israel and the Palestinians last discussed issues at the heart of the conflict -- borders of a Palestinian state, the return of refugees and status of Jerusalem.