Israeli cabinet approves referendum on peace treaty Painful concession: Israelis protest outside the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The Israeli government has approved a bill to submit any peace treaty with the Palestinians to a referendum, a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office says. "Any agreement which may be reached in negotiations will be put to a referendum," it quoted him as saying on Sunday. It is important that on such historic decisions every citizen should vote directly on an issue deciding the country's future. Peace talks: Benjamin Netanyahu explains "painful" decision in open letter to citizens. The statement followed Mr Netanyahu's announcement on Saturday that he had agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom have served 20 years or more for attacks on Israelis, to pave the way for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Washington in the coming days. Mr Netanyahu took the unusual measure of issuing what he called "an open letter to the citizens of Israel" to explain the contentious move, which many Israelis oppose, ahead of a cabinet vote on Sunday. Reports of a prisoner release had been circulating for weeks, but this was the first confirmation of numbers. The letter did not give details of identities of those to be released or the timing, but said it would be carried out in stages after the start of negotiations and in accordance with their progress. The talks were expected to begin on Tuesday after months of intense shuttle diplomacy by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Mr Netanyahu began his letter, which was posted on the prime minister's website and disseminated through the Israeli news media, with an acknowledgment of the unpopularity of the gesture, which many Israelis view as a painful concession with nothing guaranteed in return. "From time to time prime ministers are called on to make decisions that go against public opinion - when the matter is important for the country," he wrote. He added that the decision "is painful for the bereaved families, it is painful for the entire nation, and it is also very painful for me. It collides with the incomparably important value of justice. On Friday, Yediot Ahronot, an Israeli newspaper, published an impassioned open letter to Mr Netanyahu from Abie Moses, whose pregnant wife and five-year-old son, Tal, were fatally burnt in a firebomb attack on their car in April 1987. Mr Moses said that faced with the likely release of their killer, Mohammad Adel Hassin Daoud, "the wounds have reopened; the memories ... turn into physical pain in addition to the emotional pain of coping daily with the nightmare." During his previous term in office, Mr Netanyahu reached an agreement with Hamas, the Islamist militant group that governs Gaza, and exchanged more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza for five years. An Israeli government official, speaking anonymously, said many of those who remained in Israeli jails were involved in particularly gruesome acts. A cabinet briefing paper from Sunday said the government saw the referendum bill as "urgent and important" and said it would be asking parliament to fast-track its passage into law. Israeli media said that it could go before the house for a first reading this week. If adopted, a referendum would be a final endorsement of a treaty after ratification by the government and parliament. The draft is seen as a gesture to right-wing ministers apprehensive of concessions that could be demanded of Israel in the talks. It would oblige a referendum in cases where territory over which Israel claims sovereignty is ceded in a peace agreement or by a cabinet decision. That would include any part of mainly-Arab east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed in a move never recognised by the international community. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem for the capital of their state. Israel rules out ceding sovereignty over any part of what it calls its "eternal and indivisible capital."