There was dancing in the streets of the West Bank today after Israel freed more than 250 Palestinian prisoners as a sign that it is willing to help the moderate Fatah-led government there.

The mainly Fatah prisoners, some of whom were not due for release until 2015, were transported in buses from a jail in southern Israel to the West Bank and set free among crowds of families and well wishers, some of the former inmates dropping to their knees to kiss the ground.

“Today I’m reborn. Unfortunately my father, who I dreamt of seeing again, died while I was in prison,” said Mohanned Jaradat, 40, who had been serving a 20-year stretch due to end in 2009. He said he now wanted to go to university and work for the release of as many as 10,000 other Palestinians still held in Israeli cells.

“I only have three words to say: freedom, freedom, freedom,” said Abdelrahim Malluh, deputy leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP.

He was jailed for nine years in 2002, a year after his group assassinated Israel’s tourism minister in a tit-for-tat killing two months after Israel killed former PFLP chief Abu Ali Mustafa. “There is nothing more beautiful than freedom,” said Mr Malluh, the most senior Palestinian freed yesterday.

Halima Jomhur, 60, said that her son Imad had been arrested 10 days before his wedding in 2003 and sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail by Israel. “His fiancee is still waiting for him, and the first thing we’re going to do is marry them,” she said.

The freed inmates were ferried in buses bearing portraits of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and his iconic predecessor Yassir Arafat, to the presidential compound in Ramallah, where Mr Abbas greeted them in front of thousands of well-wishers.

“I thank God that we are honoured by the return of heroes of freedom to their home and the bosom of their homeland,” Mr Abbas said. “We must continue to work for the return of all Palestinian prisoners.”

In Jerusalem, a handful of Israelis who lost relatives to Palestinian attacks gathered outside the Israeli prime minister’s residence to protest at the release.

Israel said none of the prisoners had “blood on their hands,” meaning they had not been involved in attacks that resulted in the death or injury of Israelis. However, Emi Palmor, the Justice Ministry’s director of pardons, admitted that the description was somewhat arbitrary, meaning that a failed suicide bomber could be freed because his device was faulty, while a Palestinian who threw a stone at an Israeli car and that car crashed, resulting in injury, would not be released.

At least one Palestinian prisoner who had been slated for release asked to stay in jail, she said. The inmate, whose name was not divulged, was receiving medical treatment worth almost £500 a week in jail for chronic arthritis and feared he would not be able to afford such attention at home. At his doctor’s request, his name was removed from the list of those to be freed, Ms Palmor said.

Israel scrupulously avoided releasing any prisoners from the Islamic Resistance Movement, known more commonly by its acronym Hamas. Israel is keeping a tight noose around the hardline movement, which drove Mr Abbas Fatah forces out of Gaza a month ago in heavy fighting.

Israel has accused the group - opposed to the very existence of the Jewish state - of smuggling tons of explosives into the Gaza Strip in the last month, and of trying to develop Katyusha rockets that could hit major southern cities in Israel.

A senior Israeli army officer this week said that the country was on a “collision course” with the Islamists, and called for a large-scale military operation against Gaza to attack Hamas before it consolidated its hold on the teeming coastal conurbation.

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