Hamas-Israel prisoner swap deal in decisive stage

Vita Bekker, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 23. 2009 10:13PM UAE / November 23. 2009 6:13PM GMT

TEL AVIV // A possible deal for a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas appears to have entered a decisive phase.

Speculation this week in Arab, Israeli and US media on an imminent pact was followed yesterday by a flurry of meetings and reports that indicated progress in the months-long negotiations that are being mediated by Egypt and Germany. Several of the reports predicted a prisoner exchange by this weekend, when the Muslim festival of Eid al Adha begins.

“There is no deal yet,” the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, told deputies of his right-wing party, Likud, according to an official present at the meeting yesterday. “The question will be decided by the government and there will be a debate in the Knesset,” he said, referring to Israel’s parliament. Under a possible agreement, Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners that it holds in its jails in exchange for Sgt Gilad Shalit, who was captured more than three years ago when Gaza militants tunnelled out of the enclave and attacked an Israeli army post. He has been held in the Hamas-controlled territory ever since.

Such a pact may also prompt a broader deal between the two enemies that would involve Israel’s easing of its punishing blockade on the Gaza Strip and a curtailment of rocket fire by Gaza militants on Israel.

In Cairo, a delegation of Hamas, considered by Israel and its US ally to be a terrorist organisation, yesterday met Egyptian security officials to review details of the agreement, according to the Saudi-backed Al-Arabiya television in Dubai. The delegation was headed by Mahmoud Zahar, a founder of Hamas, and two senior members of the group’s armed wing, whose crossing into Egypt yesterday was monitored by Israeli helicopters that hovered overhead.

In Israel, Noam Shalit, the father of the kidnapped soldier, convened in Tel Aviv with the government’s lead negotiator in the indirect talks on the prisoner swap and gathered later in the day with several government ministers and politicians in Jerusalem in meetings whose content was kept under wraps.

As he emerged from the discussions, Mr Shalit told reporters he was “not calm” about the developments and that “it is not the moment to talk”.

Since his son was abducted in June 2006, Mr Shalit has mounted an intense public campaign to pressure the Israeli government to act to return his son. His efforts have drawn wide support from Israelis on the Right and the Left of the political spectrum and have spurred the involvement of such countries as France, where the Shalit family also holds citizenship.

According to media reports, both Israel and Hamas appeared now to have softened their stances. Israel has agreed to include 160 inmates whose release it had opposed previously, including some Palestinians holding Israeli citizenship.

On its end, Hamas has accepted Israel’s demand that some of those freed would go into exile in Lebanon, Syria or another country instead of returning to their homes in the Gaza Strip or West Bank.

Fuelling speculation in Israel of an approaching agreement, Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, said after meeting Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, in Cairo on Sunday that “real progress has been made” in the talks.

Mr Peres’s comments were the only official indication of the advanced stage of negotiations amid a blackout on information about the talks that had been imposed on the country’s media by the military censorship. In Gaza, Hamas officials told reporters they were under strict instructions not to make public statements on the issue.

Officials close to the negotiations have said in recent months that an agreement in the first phase would call for Hamas to transfer Sgt Shalit to Egypt while Israel frees between 350 and 450 prisoners. More Palestinians would be released from the jails in following weeks.

The speculation on an imminent deal follows the release by Israel of 20 Palestinian women from its prisons at the start of October in return for a video proving Sgt Shalit, now 23, was alive and appeared to be in decent health. The exchange was viewed as a confidence-building gesture towards a broader pact.

Despite the optimistic reports, the Israeli government yesterday played down prospects for a deal soon. After all, a pact had also seemed near during the final days in office of Ehud Olmert, the previous Israeli prime minister, whose last-ditch effort to clinch a prisoner exchange failed in March as both he and Hamas accused each other of hardening their stances.

Mr Netanyahu’s office yesterday called some foreign media reports on the deal “deliberately distorted” and added that the efforts for Sgt Shalit’s release are “taking place outside the media spotlight”.

Any agreement will probably face opposition from Israelis whose relatives have been killed in Palestinian attacks.

Three fathers from the northern city of Haifa, whose children died in a suicide bombing on a bus in 2003, this week sent a letter to Mr Netanyahu in which they threatened legal action if Israel does not publicise the names of the prisoners it intends to free.

Their campaign is already being backed by several former top military figures and will probably also gather the support of some of the more hard-line ministers in Mr Netanyahu’s governing coalition, who claim the inmates are likely to renew their attacks against Israel once they are released.

foreign.desk@thenational.ae