Three Palestinian militant groups holding a teenage Israeli soldier on Monday set Israel a one-day deadline to meet their demands to free Palestinian prisoners.
”Faced with the Zionist enemy’s persistence in taking military measures and aggressions, we give it a delay expiring Tuesday, July 4 at 6am [3am GMT],” said a statement issued by the Popular Resistance Committees, the armed wing of the governing Hamas movement and the Army of Islam in Gaza.
”If the enemy does not meet the demands we laid out in our previous statement … we will consider the matter closed and the enemy will be responsible for all results,” the statement added.
On Saturday, the same three groups demanded the release of 1 000 Arab, Muslim, Palestinian and ”other” prisoners but did not explicitly specify that the releases were conditions for securing the freedom of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized eight days ago.
Last Monday, they also called for the release of all Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails in exchange for information about the soldier, who was snatched in a deadly raid on an army post on June 25.
Israel has flatly ruled out any question of negotiating with the abductors or releasing prisoners in exchange for Shalit’s release.
Senior Israeli officials openly admitted that the offensive launched last week also aims to curb ongoing rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, which the army has been unable to stop by air strikes and shelling.
”We will keep up the pressure until the soldier Gilad Shalit is unconditionally freed and the rocket fire stops,” Justice Minister Haim Ramon said.
But equally, Israel is prepared to unseat the Palestinian government led by the radical Hamas movement, which refuses to recognise the Jewish state’s right to exist or renounce violence, and reestablish the army’s power of deterrence.
”No one will shed a tear if the Palestinian Authority crumbles. Not even the Palestinians,” said Housing Minister Meir Sheetrit.
According to analysts, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan to pull out from most of the occupied West Bank, in a similar way to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last summer, is also at stake.
”The continuation of Palestinian attacks from the Gaza Strip convinced Israelis that the same thing will occur in areas in the West Bank which are evacuated under Olmert’s realignment plan,” says the Haaretz daily’s political analyst Daniel Ben Simon.
”In this context, the plan loses all its legitimacy. Public opinion is under the impression of being tricked by the Palestinians after Israel withdrew from every inch of the Gaza Strip last September,” he said.
Menachem Klein, a lecturer in politics at Tel Aviv’s Bar Ilan University, agrees: ”The attack in Gaza Strip, he [Olmert] hopes, will also help to promote his plan in the West Bank.
”The idea is to clean the Gaza Strip from the Hamas government … Not having Hamas in power will help Olmert to sell, market the idea of a further redeployment and evacuation of settlements in the West Bank,” he added.
According to Yossi Alpher, a former government advisor, an Israeli operation in what is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth became unavoidable once the army realised it was powerless in the face of incessant homemade rocket fire.
Since the beginning of last month, Palestinian militants have launched more than 200 rockets at Israel, albeit causing no serious casualties.
”The abduction of the soldier last week, and the death of two others in the same Palestinian attack, was the last straw,” Alpher said.
”A big part of the defence establishment has been asking since the January 25 [Palestinian] elections to eliminate the Hamas government, which advocates the destruction of Israel in a more or less long term and supports terrorism.”
The arrest of 64 Hamas ministers and MPs in a sweep across the West Bank last Thursday backs this hypothesis, although the initial objective was ”to obtain bargaining chips, despite official denials”, Alpher insisted.
While Israel plans to charge, try and jail the Hamas MPs in Israel, Olmert has also threatened to put other Palestinian leaders in Gaza behind bars.
The premier categorically rejected demands to swap Shalit with Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
”We have no intention of capitulating to blackmail. Everyone knows that capitulating to terrorism today means inviting the next act of terrorism. We will not do this,” Olmert said on Sunday.
But according to Alpher, himself a former official in Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Olmert should not be taken at his exact word.
”Following every kidnapping, Israel has declared it would never give in, only to end up by paying a high price after a certain period, which public opinion accepts,” he said.
The head of Israel’s Shin Beth internal security service, Yuval Diskin, estimated on Sunday that the crisis could drag on for months.
”We need patience, there is no miracle solution. The resolution of this affair could take several months,” he said. – Sapa-AFP