In Shalit case, Mubarak treated as "Israeli soldier

Source: AFP, 19-02-2009
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AL-QUDS): "Israel's" security cabinet voted on Wednesday to make a Gaza truce conditional on the release of a captive soldier, a move that was slammed by the Jewish state's top negotiator in the Egyptian-brokered talks. the 12-member security cabinet voted unanimously to back outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence that Gilad Shalit should be released as part of a truce with Hamas, a stance that the Islamists rejected.
"The security cabinet unanimously decided that the release of the soldier Shalit is a condition to any agreement with Hamas and the opening of border crossings," Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit told journalists after the meeting.
"It would be unthinkable for anybody to reach an accord with Hamas, whether through Egypt or not, without the release of Gilad Shalit," he said.
However, "Israel's" own pointman for the Egyptian negotiations, senior Defense (War) Ministry official Amos Gilad, disagreed with Sheetrit's assessment and lashed out at the changed "Israeli" position.
"Suddenly, the order of things has been changed. Suddenly, first we have to get Gilad. I don't understand that. Where does that lead, to insult the Egyptians? To make them want to drop the whole thing? What do we stand to gain from that?" the Maariv daily quoted him as telling an associate.
"The Egyptians have shown extraordinary courage. They've given us maneuvering room, they're trying to mediate, they're investing efforts, they're showing goodwill of a kind they've never shown before," he said.
"Mubarak has been fair and courageous ... What are we thinking? That they work for us? That they're a subordinate unit of ours?" the "Israeli" official asked of the cabinet's reasoning.
Hamas rejected the "Israeli" decision and stuck to its position that Shalit's release be negotiated separately as part of a prisoner exchange involving hundreds of Palestinians currently held in "Israeli" jails.
"This Zionist position imposes new conditions at the last minute. This completely contradicts the Egyptian and Palestinian positions," Hamas spokes-man Fawzi Barhum said in a statement in which he accused "Israel" of "blackmail."
Olmert first made the demand that Shalit - a now 22-year-old soldier seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006 - be released as part of a truce deal at the weekend.
Shalit's capture followed on the heels of a spate of arrests of Hamas representatives who had recently been elected to the Palestinian Parliament.
Hamas has said any truce must include the opening of Gaza's border crossings, which "Israel" has closed to all but scarce humanitarian aid since the Islamist movement won parliamentary elections deemed fair and free by international observers in 2006. After Hamas took power by force in 2007, "Israel" further tightened its noose.
Various UN officials have slammed the blockade as "collective punishment of a civilian population," an act illegal under international law that the Fourth Geneva convention defines as a war crime.
But the "Israeli" decision reached said Shalit's release was "Israel's" top priority and that officials would begin formulating a list of Palestinian prisoners while keeping the crossings mostly closed.
Egypt, which has been acting as intermediary in separate negotiations for a Gaza truce and for the prisoner exchange, has also said that the two issues should be kept separate.
"Egypt will not change its position on the truce - the matter of the "Israeli" soldier Gilad Shalit is a separate issue which can in no way be linked to the truce negotiations," the state-owned Egyptian daily Al-Ahram quoted President Hosni Mubarak as saying.
"Israeli" ministers may have been swayed by Shalit's family, which on Tuesday evening issued a statement demanding that his release should be "the first condition in any accord on a truce" with Hamas.
"The chance which currently presents itself must not be missed as it was in previous agreements," they said, referring to a six months' truce in Gaza agreed between "Israel" and Hamas in June last year.
That truce was shattered by "Israel" with a November 4 invasion of Gaza that killed seven Palestinians. The breaking of the deal prompted Gazan fighters to resume rocket attacks into southern "Israel".
The Zionist state claimed stopping the rockets was the reason for its onslaught of Gaza starting in late December.
Egypt has been acting as a go-between in efforts to consolidate the separate ceasefires that ended "Israel's" deadly 22-day Gaza offensive on January 18. The war killed more than 1,300 Palestinians, two-thirds of whom were civilians and including over 400 children. Thirteen "Israelis", 10 of whom were soldiers, also lost their lives over the same time.
The ceasefires have been rattled by "Israeli" military raids, including air strikes early Wednesday targeting a Hamas position and seven alleged smuggling tunnels on the Gaza-Egypt border, and retaliatory Palestinian attacks.
No one was killed or wounded in the strikes.