/ 2 October 2009

Israel gets video of captive soldier in swap for prisoners

Israel freed 19 Palestinian women prisoners on Friday in a swap for footage showing soldier Gilad Shalit looking healthy after more than three years in captivity at the hands of Gaza militants.

“Gilad appeared in good health and this reinforces our responsibility to bring him home,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak told the Shalit family in a telephone call.

Israeli media said the video, which lasts two minutes and 40 seconds, shows a healthy-looking, clean-shaven Shalit speaking coherently to the camera and holding up a copy of a Gaza newspaper dated September 14.

The footage was expected to be made public later on Friday.

The Shalit family saw the video after military chief-of-staff Gabi Ashkenazi assessed it and gave the green light for the prisoner release, officials said.

“This is the first step,” Shalit’s father, Noam, said “Now it’s a new countdown” to Shalit’s hoped-for release, he said, adding however that he was “not particularly” optimistic that his son would be freed soon.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the “importance of the tape is in confirming the condition of Gilad Shalit and in placing on Hamas the full responsibility for Gilad’s health”, his spokesperson, Nir Hefetz, said.

“Although the road [to his release] is still long and arduous, knowing that he is healthy and in one piece is encouraging to us all,” he added.

In the West Bank, friends, relatives and officials cheered and wept as the released Palestinian women passed a checkpoint on their way to a ceremony hosted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.

Eighteen of the women were taken to the West Bank, one to the Gaza Strip and another will be freed in the coming days.

“To exchange one minute of Gilad Shalit for 20 ladies is a big victory,” said Qiffah Afanah, who served nine months for assaulting a soldier.

She cried with joy as she hugged her father at the Ofer checkpoint where relatives, friends and officials cheered their homecoming.

In the Gaza Strip, Fatima al-Zaq stood stony-faced at a welcome ceremony hosted by the Hamas rulers of the Palestinian territory, holding her son, Yusuf, who was born while she was behind bars in Israel.

“Thank God and Hamas,” she told the crowd, adding: “The joy will not be complete without the release of all the prisoners, especially the women.”

Zaq and a niece of hers were arrested at Erez in May 2007, allegedly on their way to carry out suicide attacks in Israel. Zaq, then 39, was two months pregnant with her ninth child.

Deadly cross-border
Israeli officials stressed that Friday’s swap did not herald Shalit’s imminent release, but was meant as a confidence-building measure ahead of “decisive stages in the negotiations”.

The deal was a major breakthrough after nearly three years of on-again, off-again Egyptian-brokered negotiations between Israel and Hamas. German mediators also joined the talks in July.

It was the first time Israel has released prisoners as part of the talks, and the first video footage of Shalit since his capture. Previously his family had received an audio recording and several letters.

France on Friday called for the soldier, who also holds French nationality, to be freed immediately.

Cairo has been trying to broker a deal under which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be released in exchange for Shalit, who has been held in Gaza since he was seized in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006.

Shalit, now 23, was seized after militants, including Hamas, tunnelled out of the Palestinian territory and attacked an Israeli army post, killing two soldiers.

With the exception of Zaq, all the women released are from the West Bank and none has been directly implicated in killing Israelis.

A total of 7 200 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons, and those freed on Friday were among 60 women prisoners. The prisons service says 320 are under 18 years old.

Hamas hailed the swap as “a “victory for the resistance”. — AFP