Palestinian security forces under the command of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas were desperately searching on Monday for the Israeli soldier kidnapped by militants the previous day, as the army massing on Gaza’s border stood poised to invade.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said he had given the army orders for a ”broad sweeping operation” in Gaza, although it is unlikely to do anything to jeopardise the life of Corporal Gilad Shilat, the 19-year-old gunner snatched from a tank in a border raid in which Hamas militants admitted they took part.
”Let it be clear: we will reach everyone, no matter where they are, and they know it,” Olmert said in Jerusalem. ”There will not be immunity for anyone.”
Israel has warned Abbas that it holds him responsible for Shilat. Negotiators were said to be in contact with the captors and working on a face-saving deal. The minimum the militants are prepared to accept is to exchange the hostage for the bodies of the two men who were killed by Israel in Sunday’s raid. However some of the captors want to negotiate for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
Israel realises that the best chance of securing the release of the soldier is to allow negotiators to work in a peaceful atmosphere. It was not clear on Monday exactly who was holding the soldier.
A spokesperson for the Popular Resistance Committees, a Fatah offshoot that claimed responsibility for the raid, made contradictory claims about whether it held the soldier. The political wing of Hamas said it only learned of the kidnapping from the Israeli media, despite the involvement of its military wing.
The soldier was seized during an audacious cross-border raid on Sunday that left two Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian gunmen dead.
The soldier was taken to be used as a bargaining chip to secure the release of some of the 9 000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, but most Palestinians feel he has already become an excessive burden.
Walid Awad, a spokesperson for Abbas, said that Palestinian forces were making every effort to locate and free the prisoner. ”We are trying to calm the atmosphere so negotiations can continue free of tension,” he said. ”Everything that can be done is being done to ensure this matter ends well.”
In Jerusalem on Monday morning, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, told ambassadors from the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries that she expected them to condemn Sunday’s attack and abduction and call for the unconditional release of the Israeli hostage.
If Israel was forced to take action to secure the release of the hostage, she said, it expected the international community to understand and see it in the framework of legitimate self-defence.
Livni went on to praise Egypt and Jordan for the hard work of their diplomats in trying to secure the release of the Israeli hostage. Shalit holds French citizenship and France was in touch with Palestinian officials to press for his release.
In Gaza City, families of prisoners held by the Israelis held their weekly demonstration outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross. They chanted: ”Kidnap a soldier and free 100 in return.”
However, their view was not widely held. Nafez Abu Raba (44) said that the kidnapping placed the whole of Gaza under threat of Israeli attack. ”Things were just beginning to improve slightly,” he said. ”There was a bit more money coming in. Fatah and Hamas were on the verge of an agreement. And now this. On Sunday night it was like there was a curfew and even now there is no one on the streets. They will have to give the Israeli back so they should do it quickly and not harm him.”
His friend Akram Rama (53) said it was clear the prisoner must be returned but he hoped that the militants could exact some kind of concession from Israel in return. – Guardian Unlimited Â