|
World Jewish News
Hamas: No new developments in talks for Schalit's release
15.03.2009
After Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he had given his two top negotiators a Sunday night deadline for negotiations for Gilad Schalit's release, Hamas said there had been no new developments in the case of the captured soldier.
Speaking in Cairo, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told The Associated Press on Sunday afternoon that he considered Olmert's statement, and the arrival of senior negotiator Ofer Dekel and Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] head Yuval Diskin to be bargaining tactics.
"We have not received anything new," he said. "We will not change our position."
Olmert had said at the beginning of Sunday's cabinet meeting that he had instructed Diskin and Dekel "to exhaust the efforts to return Gilad until this evening."
"Tomorrow, the government will convene to discuss the outcome of the talks and according to the circumstances, we will decide if and how we will make a decision," he added.
Olmert was speaking after Diskin and Dekel had already been dispatched to Egypt to meet top officials there.
Dekel returned to Israel from his latest round of talks with Egyptian mediators on Thursday and briefed Olmert. The fact that Dekel was ordered to return to Cairo on Saturday, accompanied by Diskin, is a sign that progress was achieved, although officials in Jerusalem refused to talk of a "breakthrough."
"Over the last three years, we have made great efforts on a long list of channels, some of them covert, all geared to securing the release of Schalit," Olmert told the cabinet on Sunday.
"Until today," the prime minister continued, "the position of Hamas has been more extreme than what any moderate voice in Israel would be willing to accept."
"I have said in the past, and I repeat: we want to bring Gilad home, and we are making great and unprecedented efforts in order to do so," he added. "But it is versus an inhumane terror organization that believes human compassion is a weakness."
While in Egypt, Dekel and Diskin will meet with senior Egyptian intelligence officials in a last effort to finalize an agreement, sources told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday night.
At the special cabinet session scheduled for Monday morning, ministers will either be asked to approve the details of a prisoner swap, or be briefed on the unsuccessful efforts.
Fourteen of the 26 cabinet ministers have told the Post that they would likely support a deal, or at the very least would not prevent it from going forward.
Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu has been updated by Olmert, but was not asked to approve the latest developments.
Israel's deadline of Sunday night for an agreement is based on the expectation that coalition agreements for the new government are to be presented to the Knesset on Tuesday.
"This is the last week that decision-makers have to fulfill their obligation to save Gilad," Yoel Schalit, Gilad's older brother, told Channel 2 on Saturday.
Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog stressed that "these hours are fateful" for the captured soldier's freedom.
"The heart yearns for his return, but the situation is complex and difficult," said Herzog prior to Sunday's cabinet meeting. "The other side doesn't seem to understand that we also have red lines."
Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit said before the meeting that "great efforts were made at the weekend" to bring about Schalit's release.
"One must understand that this government's days are numbered. Today, the issue will be decided upon and we hope that the decision will be positive," said Sheetrit. "If so, it will be a good accord with which to end the current government's term. This government is prepared to finalize the deal, [because] when it's replaced, no one knows what will happen."
Although officials remain tight-lipped on details of the contacts with Hamas, via Egyptian mediators, it is believed that a figure of 450 Palestinian prisoners in return for Schalit's release was agreed to some time ago.
What is believed to be holding up a deal is Israel's refusal to free an unspecified number of detainees demanded by Hamas, and Jerusalem's insistence that some of the West Bank prisoners be exiled either to Gaza or abroad.
This latest round of talks in Cairo comes after Schalit's family stepped up its campaign to pressure Olmert to finalize a deal before he leaves office.
For the past week, Gilad's parents Noam and Aviva have sat in a tent they pitched outside the prime minister's Jerusalem residence. They even held a Friday night dinner there and intend to stay in the tent until Olmert leaves office.
Numerous ministers, politicians and visitors from abroad have stopped by the tent to show their support for the Schalit family. At least 10,000 of those visitors signed a petition in which they urged the government to authorize a prisoner swap for Gilad.
On Sunday, Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz visited the protest tent.
"Releasing [abducted soldier] Gilad Schalit is a moral duty of both the State of Israel and the Israeli government," Mofaz said. "We must do everything feasible to bring him back. My impression is that the efforts are in the right direction, and we all hope that they will succeed," he added.
Regarding the special cabinet meeting set for Monday for a possible approval of a prisoner swap deal, Mofaz said: "We do not know yet what the meeting will be on. I hope we will be able to discuss a decision, and can only hope that it will pass. This is a national-level moral duty. In the same way that we send soldiers off to our missions, we must ensure their safe return home."
Meanwhile, Gilad's father, Noam, told Army Radio on Sunday morning that it was "too early to be encouraged" by Diskin and Dekel's trip to Cairo.
"I don't know what the Shin Bet head's proposal is," he said. "We were briefed on the fact that there was some kind of move. But we were not updated on all the details and we don't know if there has been any progress."
Schalit repeated his concerns that the upcoming change in government would decrease the chances of his son's return.
"We know that passing the issue on to another government, like in the case of [missing airman] Ron Arad, hampers the chances for freeing Gilad, and lessens the chances that we'll ever see him again."
Also Sunday, former Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency] head and security cabinet member Ami Ayalon expressed his support for the proposed prisoner swap deal for Schalit's release.
"Many of the Palestinian prisoners whose release is being discussed were tried and imprisoned during my tenure as Shin Bet head," he told Army Radio. "There is no prisoner sitting in an Israeli jail worth Gilad Schalit's continued captivity. There is simply no one like that."
He went on to say that freeing 450 "high-level" prisoners on the Hamas list would not necessarily lead to an increase in terror attacks.
"Terror depends less on the identity of terrorists that are freed than on diplomatic horizons and the atmosphere on the Palestinian street," he said. "I am not ignoring the dilemma, there are contradictory values and people with blood on their hands, but on the other hand, there is a soldier that we recruited to the IDF and sent out to battle."
Ayalon added, nonetheless, that there was a "red line" Israel would not go under.
"We should not pay with soldiers' lives and suicide bombs, so that Gilad Schalit can come home," he explained. "Israel's policy over the years has been to negotiate only when there is no military solution, but the price we are paying with these talks is less than [the possibility of] Israeli fatalities from suicide attacks."
Источник: JPost.com
|
|
