Jerusalem - Israel's cabinet voted Sunday to approve the release of some 200 Palestinians from its jails, in a move a government spokesman described as "a confidence-building measure to strengthen the peace process and dialogue."

The release, Mark Regev said, was intended "to demonstrate that the path of moderation, negotiation and reconciliation would bring tangible results."

He said the release would include prisoners with "blood on their hands" - Israeli terminology for prisoners who carried out attacks in which people were killed.

When they met on August 6, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to free more prisoners, as a "goodwill gesture and a confidence-building measure."

The fate of the approximately 8,500 Palestinians in Israeli jails is a highly emotional one for the Palestinians.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded their release, as a way of building his standing in the eyes of his electorate, and showing that he can get prisoners freed through negotiations, rather than through kidnapping Israelis to use as bargaining chips, the tactic favoured by such militants groups as Hamas and the Iranian- backed Lebanese Hezbollah.

On July 16, after weeks of negotiations, Israel freed five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Kuntar, jailed in 1979 for leading an attack in which four Israelis were killed, in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah snatched in a cross- border raid on July 12, 2006.

But negotiations for the release of an Israeli soldier, kidnapped by Gaza-based militias on June 25, 2006, and still held in the Gaza Strip, have so far come to naught.

Hamas, which is demanding the release of around 1,000 Palestinians in exchange for Corporal Gilad Shalit, slammed the Israeli cabinet's decision Sunday as an attempt to widen the internal Palestinian rift.

The Islamist movement, which rejects reconciliation with Israel, has been at odds with Abbas' Fatah organization since routing forces loyal to the Palestinian president last year and seizing control of Gaza Strip installations.

The Israeli decision, a Hamas statement said, was "an attempt to boost the internal Palestinian split by supporting one party against the other party," since the prisoners who would be released would be affiliated with Fatah, and not with Hamas.

The cabinet vote, the statement said, was intended "to give the impression that the chairman of the (Palestinian) Authority could achieve something via negotiations with the occupation (Israel), which is not true."