More foot-dragging

The "Shalit affair" is being delayed for cynical ends, writes Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah

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Gilad Shalit

Hamas has accused Israel of "dragging its feet" and "showing little seriousness" about negotiating a prospective prisoner swap deal whereby Israel would free hundreds of Palestinian political and resistance prisoners in exchange for Hamas releasing an Israeli occupation army soldier captured by Palestinian fighters near Gaza two years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he would like to speed up the negotiations with Hamas on a swap deal. Olmert was quoted as saying that he instructed all those who are involved in the negotiations with Hamas "to do what is necessary" so that the talks can progress as quickly as possible.

However, the Israeli government, especially the intelligence and security establishment, seems generally opposed to freeing hundreds of prominent Palestinian prisoners on the grounds that such a step would boost Hamas's popularity, mostly at the expense of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) regime.

"We are well aware of the Israeli negotiating patterns. They are trying to frustrate us into compromising on our demands. But that won't happen, because our prisoners are human beings, too, and have loved ones impatiently awaiting their release from Israeli dungeons and detention camps," said Ahmed Youssef, chief political advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Gaza-based Hamas government.

Youssef said he believed the Bush administration was pressing Israel not to reach a high-profile prisoner-swap deal with Hamas at this time lest such a deal undermines the stature of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Observers in the occupied Palestinian territories noted that the recently Egyptian- mediated ceasefire between Hamas and Israel more or less militated against Fatah's interests.

Fatah had been hoping that Hamas would eventually succumb to Israeli and international pressure, especially the harsh year- long blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, which has nearly completely destroyed the Gaza economy and pushed the coastal enclave's 1.5 million inhabitants to the brink of a social and human catastrophe.

Similarly, there are certain influential circles within Fatah that view a successful end of the "Shalit affair" from a Palestinian perspective as a huge booster for Hamas.

This assessment seems to be generally accurate. The list of Palestinian prisoners Hamas asks to be released includes, inter alia, prominent Fatah leaders such as Marwan Al-Barghouti and Abu Ali Yatta as well as Said Al-Ataba, who is affiliated with the anti- Islamic Palestine Democratic Union (FIDA) which is affiliated with the PA. Yatta and Ataba have been in Israeli jails for 28 and 31 years respectively.

Al-Ahram Weekly this week spoke with the wife of Abu Ali Yatta during a visit to their home in the town of Yatta near Hebron in the southern West Bank.

Yatta, arrested in 1980 for killing a Jewish settler-soldier, has nearly lost his eyesight and is suffering from a host of illnesses, including hypertension and cardiac congestion. However, successive Israeli governments adamantly refused to release him, apparently fearing stiff opposition from powerful settler circles.

"They say my husband has blood on his hand. Well, who in Israel doesn't have Palestinian blood on their hands? Are Olmert's hands clean? Are Barak's hands clean? My husband killed an occupation soldier who most likely had killed innocent Palestinians, but thousands of Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed Palestinian children and other innocent civilians. So why is it that these Jewish child-killers are free and enjoying life," asked Um Ibrahim.

She told the Weekly that, "we hope and pray that this year would be Abu Ali's last year in Israeli prisons and detention camps. There are too many Israelis with blood on their hands who have not spent a single day in jail."

In truth, the mantra of "the sanctity of Jewish blood" has been drowned many times in a sea of Palestinian blood and effectively lost whatever legitimacy it may have had even in the eyes of Jews themselves.

Israel has on many occasions released Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners who had killed Israeli soldiers and settlers, mainly in prisoner swap deals. Moreover, the Israeli cabinet this week agreed to release veteran Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar who nearly 30 years ago killed several settlers in northern Israel as part of a German-brokered deal with Hizbullah.

According to the impending deal, Israel will release Kuntar and a number of other Hizbullah fighters as well as an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release from Hizbullah custody of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured by the Lebanese organisation during Israel's war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahhar said the Israeli decision to release Kuntar, despite the fact that he had Jewish blood on his hands, bolstered Hamas's determination to insist on the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

"Now we can confront them with the falsity of their mantra. Besides if they are willing to release prisoners with blood on their hands in exchange for dead bodies, they should be even more willing to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit who is alive," said Al-Zahhar.

The foot-dragging posture by Israel with regard to the Shalit issue is unlikely to make Hamas bend. Hamas itself is under immense psychological pressure from the families of hundreds of veteran Palestinian prisoners who are convinced that a successful Shalit deal is the only chance their beloved ones will see the light again.

To be sure, the Israeli government, too, is under intense public pressure to free Shalit, even at the expense of meeting Hamas's demands. Earlier this week, Noam Shalit, father of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, berated Olmert for failing to make genuine efforts to free his son. "Mr Prime Minister, you had two whole years for negotiations, for bargaining, for checking options, even for talking to Hamas. With your unbelievable worthlessness you failed to work for my son's release. Now is the time for a decision."

Such pressure is also expected to increase especially after the implementation with prisoner swap with Hizbullah.

Palestinian sources in Gaza predicted that Israel may try to generate psychological pressure on Hamas to "cut down on its exaggerated demands" by releasing a symbolic number of Palestinians as a gesture of good will towards PA President Abbas. "They might press mediators, especially Egypt, to press Hamas to moderate their demands and reciprocate a possible Israeli step of this nature," said one official who is acquainted with the Shalit affair.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported this week that Israel may free more Palestinian prisoners as gesture of good will towards Abbas. However, it is highly unlikely that prominent prisoner leaders, e.g., people like Barghouti and Yatta, would be released as part of the presumed good will gesture.

Hence, it is unlikely that such a step would significantly benefit Abbas, especially given the fact that Israel is holding as many as 12,000 Palestinian prisoners and the number keeps increasing as the Israeli occupation army keeps rounding up Palestinian activists virtually every night.

This week, Abbas asserted that all talks between his PA and the Olmert government have failed to achieve any tangible progress towards ending the Israeli occupation that began in 1967. Abbas's remarks were made during a speech before the 11th Congress of the African Union, held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday.