The shuttle diplomacy meetings held by US Secretary of State John Kerry at the end of June in Jerusalem, Amman, Ramallah and then back to Jerusalem, may not have produced any visible successes or achievements pertaining to the issues stalling the resumption of negotiations between the Palestinian and Israeli sides.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas merely described them as “useful”; behind the scenes, politicians and pundits with knowledge about the meetings thought that a return to negotiations would predominantly come through a release-of-prisoners deal and the bolstering of economic activity between the two sides in Area C of the West Bank, instead of through a freeze in the building of settlements.

A senior Palestinian official who did not want to be identified told Al-Monitor: “We feel that there is a measure of flexibility concerning the release of prisoners held prior to the 1993 Oslo Accord, whereby Kerry devoted more time to discuss this issue.” The source continued: “Kerry’s talk about how releasing the pre-1993 prisoners would constitute a way into resuming negotiations between the two sides, reveals the level of effort that the man has been putting to convince the Israelis about the need to release those prisoners. There are clearly signs of Israeli flexibility in this regard.”

The same source opined: “Releasing all or some of the pre-1993 prisoners will be a good opportunity for Israel to prove its good intentions to Kerry, in light of the adamant Israeli rejection of any talk about a settlement freeze and the establishment of a Palestinian state within the territories occupied in 1967. These are the Palestinian side’s preconditions for the resumption of negotiations.” Furthermore, these prisoners’ release would give Abbas the Palestinian green light for the resumption of negotiations, due to the high level of public sympathy toward the prisoners’ cause.