Hamas vows to release Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails soon  

The Gaza-run Islamic Hamas pledged on Tuesday to release more Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails by pressuring Israel to accept a prisoners' swap deal soon. 

Mushir al-Masri, a senior Hamas leader, told The New Arab that his movement "has strong and effective cards that will force Israel to acquiesce in its conditions."

"It seems that Israel tries to bet on the time (...) it thinks that Hamas will back down on its requirements to achieve the swap deal, and this is totally wrong," the official said. 

"Hamas," he added, "has the full power, not only locally, but also internationally, to push the indirect negotiations with the Israeli enemy toward implementing the swap deal soon." 

"Simply, the Israeli captives will be free after our prisoners, including those who belong to different factions in the Palestinian territories, especially the sick and those with high sentences, breath their freedom," he stressed. 

Hamas says they hold four Israeli soldiers, while Israel claims that two of them, Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, were killed in Gaza during the Israeli military offensive in 2014, and Hamas merely has their remains.

In 2011, Hamas and Israel implemented a prisoner exchange deal in which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian detainees, including prisoners sentenced to life, in return for Hamas freeing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

In 2014, Israel re-arrested 49 of the "liberated detainees" who lived in the occupied West Bank.

Since then, Hamas has been seeking another prisoner exchange deal through indirect negotiations with Israel under Egyptian and UN mediations, but Israel has refused to do so.

"Hamas, as well as other Palestinian resistance factions, seek, in every battle with Israel, to capture Israeli soldiers, which means that we will have more strong cards to increase the number of prisoners who must be freed in any upcoming exchange prisoner deals," al-Masri said. 

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a non-government organization, there are at least 4,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, 500 of whom are serving administrative detention orders without being charged or facing trial.