Palestinian militant sources claimed on Saturday night that they were close to reaching an agreement in negotiations over the release of an Israeli soldier. They want a guarantee that Israel will free prisoners at a future date in return for the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit.
Palestinians say they accept that Israel will not free any prisoners immediately, but insist they will give up the 19-year-old soldier only in return for a commitment for a future release. Because they have no confidence in Israeli assurances, they stipulate that it must make a commitment to a third party such as Egypt. Israel will also be expected to end its attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian Deputy Minister of Prisoner Affairs said Shalit had minor injuries but was in a stable condition. Speaking at a news conference in Ramallah, Ziad Abu Aen cited ”mediators” as telling him that Shalit, captured during a raid into Israel by militants last Sunday, had three wounds: ”I guess shrapnel wounds.”
The news came as an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at the Gaza City office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
An Israeli military spokesperson confirmed the air strike, but the official of ruling Islamist militant party Hamas was not thought to be in the office at the time.
On Saturday the three groups holding Shalit said they would free him if Israel released 1Â 000 Palestinian women, children and humanitarian cases from prison. Mark Regev, of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, rejected the demand, saying that Israel would make no deals.
There has been energetic diplomacy to prevent the situation descending into a bloodbath. Ghazi Hamed, spokesperson for the Hamas government, said Egypt, Turkey and other governments were mediating and making progress. ”Israel says it will not agree to a simultaneous release, but it will agree to release prisoners in the future. We are looking for a third party, possibly Egypt, to accept a guarantee from Israel that it will respect that they will release prisoners at a later date,” he said.
However, Walid Awad, a spokesperson for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, said ”immense Egyptian efforts” to resolve the crisis were being thwarted by Israeli intransigence and the inability of the Hamas government to exercise any influence on its military wing.
”Ismail Haniyeh, the current Prime Minister, appears not to have any say in what is going on in this regard,” he said. Awad said Israel was threatening to ramp up military action unless the soldier was freed by midnight on Saturday.
But there was no relief for Gaza on Saturday as the sonic booms of Israeli attacks from sea and air could be heard every hour. An air strike on an electricity plant left homes and hospitals without essential power while the World Food Programme, which helps feed about 600Â 000 people in the occupied territories, says that many Palestinians are now living on one meal a day, and there has a been a rise in anaemia and kidney problems due to poor nutrition.
Karen Koning AbuZayd, the head of the United Nations’s relief agency, said there was a humanitarian crisis growing for Gaza’s 1,4-million people. ”Gaza is an urban environment but urban life is not functioning. Water is not getting to people in apartment buildings and there is very little power. The situation can better be compared to Sarajevo, although it’s not that sort of siege,” she said.
After leaving Gaza 10 months ago, Israeli troops are now dug in around southern Gaza and massed in the north. Israel’s re-engagement with Gaza began before dawn last Sunday when eight men from Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and the hitherto unknown Islamic Army, crawled through a tunnel from Gaza to attack Israeli positions from the rear.
They destroyed an armoured personnel carrier and a tank, killing two Israelis and abducting Corporal Shilat. Bedouin trackers, who volunteer for the Israeli army, found the footprints and believe that Shilat was wounded but able to walk unaided.
The Islamic Army appears to be a part of the Popular Resistance Committees, but some Gazans believe it is a new group which draws its inspiration from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda rather than the quest for Palestinian liberation. For years, Fatah splinter groups have operated independently of its mainstream leadership, but this time it was Hamas that was to be embarrassed by its lack of control of its cadres.
Previously Hamas was a disciplined group that kept disputes internal and spoke with one voice. It decided to enter the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council in January after a lengthy period of consultation.
However, six months in office have left many activists disillusioned by the inability of Hamas to take control of events and the perceived hypocrisy of the Western governments in rejecting the democratic choice of the Palestinian electorate.
”People are very angry and frustrated,” said Yehiyeh Musa, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. ”People have been calling us cowards.”
For some in the Israeli government, the abduction of Shilat provided an opportunity to settle scores with Hamas. ”There is a school of thought that believes that an armed conflict with Hamas would be inevitable and this would have happened without the abduction,” said Yossi Alpher, an Israeli strategic analyst. — Guardian Unlimited