If you're using Maven 3, one option to work around this problem is to use the versions plugin http://www.mojohaus.org/versions-maven-plugin/
Specifically the commands,
mvn versions:set -DnewVersion=2.0-RELEASE
mvn versions:commit
This will update the parent and child poms to 2.0-RELEASE. You can run this as a build step before.
Unlike the release plugin, it doesn't try to talk to your source control