By Joshua Brilliant, United Press International, 21.11.06 

TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Israeli doves Tuesday advocated the government be more lenient with Palestinians who played minor roles in deadly terrorist attacks.
The government considers everybody involved in such attacks, even people who played minor roles such as messengers, as having "blood on their hands." Israel has refused to release such people and penalties are severe.
The issue came up Tuesday in a debate in Tel Aviv organized by the Geneva Initiative, which devised an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
A former head of the Civil Administration in the West Bank, Brig. Gen. in the reserves Ilan Paz, said some 10,000 security prisoners are serving time in Israeli jails. Two-thirds of them are considered to have blood on their hands.
Paz said that security prisoners who served 10 to 30 year sentences are now among the leaders of a more "pragmatic line" towards Israel and seek a dialogue with it. Some prisoners now serving five to 20 year sentences deserve to be in the future Palestinian leadership, he added. Israel should begin a dialogue with those prisoners now, he said.
Retired Brig. Gen. Orit Adato, who commanded the Prisons Service at the outset of the intifada, suggested Israel distinguish between ideologues, major perpetrators and those whose offenses were light. If they serve time together the latter will eventually become murderers, she said.
Former Palestinian Minister for Prisoners Affairs Hisham Abdul Rrazek, who spent 21 years in Israeli jails, noted that the Palestinians consider those prisoners as being freedom fighters. Eighty percent of the Palestinian Preventive Security personnel had served time in Israeli jails. So did 40 percent of the members of the General Intelligence, and at least 40 percent of the policemen.
More former prisoners will become legislators and Cabinet ministers, he predicted.