GAZA CITY, July 14 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The Palestinians sought Monday, July 14, to break an impasse with Israel over the release of prisoners through international interference.

"The problem has reached stalemate and needs international intervention to force Israel to change its stance," Hisham Abdelrazeq, minister for prisoners affairs, said during a sit-in in support of the prisoners at the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza.

"We have rejected Israel's stance and we have called on the Quartet to intervene," the minister added, referring to the European Union, Russia, United Nations and United States, which together drew up the international peace plan known as the roadmap.

"The bottom line of the prisoners issue is to set free all prisoners," he said, adding that the decisions of release should be carried out by a joint Palestinian-Israeli committee, rather than by unilateral decisions on the Israeli part.

Israel decided last week to release just 350 of the estimated 6,000 Palestinians held in its jails, but not a single member of the resistance groups Hamas or Islamic Jihad was among them.

The prisoners issue has proved to be the biggest obstacle to progress in the roadmap to date and lies at the heart of a division between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas.

Abdelrazeq pointed out that the joint Palestinian Israeli committee has not convened so far, due to the intransigence of the Israeli side, adding that Israel should withdraw its stance of releasing some prisoners alone.

"Prison strikes and sit-ins and protests supporting prisoners are nothing but a refutation," he said, calling upon mass media and Arab communities in foreign countries to work for activating the issue of prisoners through sit-ins and submitting memos to pressure Israel.

The weekly sit-in of prisoners' families held Monday, July 14 witnessed wider participation, following the declaration by Palestinian factions in late June 2003 of suspending their military operations on condition that all prisoners in Israeli jails be released indiscriminately.

"We want the release of all prisoners as soon as practicable, and we hope that God helps us to achieve this objective in light of truce declaration," Seham Shaat, aunt of Hesham Shaat, a detainee in Nafha prison for 16 years, told IslamOnline.net correspondent while covering the sit-in events.

Seham expressed her complete refusal of Israeli discrimination policy among prisoners, elaborating, "We seek indiscriminate release of all prisoners."

"My son, Ramy, is a prisoner in Israeli Hadareem jail. He has not been tried so far. Occupation forces accuse him of some charges, including setting fire and moving packages," Umm Ramzy Salem, carrying her son's picture, said, expressing optimism that all prisoners would be released.

She called upon all resistance factions to give the issue of prisoners a priority and expressed her satisfaction that the truce is conditioned upon the release of prisoners. She also called the Palestinians to support those prisoners.

Martyr Mahmoud Al-Khawaga, a leader of the Islamic Jihad movement, pointed out that her son Yasser has been in Israeli jails for 10 years due to his affiliation to the Islamic Jihad movement.