"Israel agrees to free 1,027 Palestinians in swap for soldier; Top Fatah leader not expected to be among released" by Ethan Bronner | New York Times, October 12, 2011
JERUSALEM - Israel and Hamas announced an agreement yesterday to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for an Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza for five years, a deal brokered by Egypt that seemed likely to shake up Middle East politics at a time when the region is immersed in turmoil.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel told his nation in a live address on television that the soldier, Staff Sergeant Gilad Shalit, who was captured in June 2006 at the age of 19, could be home “within days,’’ ending what has been widely seen in Israel as a national trauma.
In Damascus, Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas, said in a televised address that the negotiations had been “very, very difficult’’ and called the deal “a national accomplishment’’ that augured well for the Palestinians, who he said hoped to “cleanse the land, and liberate Jerusalem, and unite the Palestinian ranks.’’
Did he really say it that way or was the translation wrong?
It was unclear what drove the two to accept a deal that had been on the table for years. But both stand to benefit politically and had reasons to distract attention from the efforts of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, as he circles the globe seeking votes for his bid to gain UN membership for a state of Palestine.
Related: Abbas Hailed as Hero
Egypt played a central role in the deal, helping bolster its international standing at a time of growing internal political strife as well as strains with Israel, which has seen its relationship with Egypt deteriorate since President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February.
Did he really say it that way or was the translation wrong?
It was unclear what drove the two to accept a deal that had been on the table for years. But both stand to benefit politically and had reasons to distract attention from the efforts of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, as he circles the globe seeking votes for his bid to gain UN membership for a state of Palestine.
Related: Abbas Hailed as Hero
Egypt played a central role in the deal, helping bolster its international standing at a time of growing internal political strife as well as strains with Israel, which has seen its relationship with Egypt deteriorate since President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February.
Just last month, an Egyptian mob attacked Israel’s embassy and its diplomatic staff was evacuated....
Related: Egyptians Attack Israeli Embassy
Also see: Israel Wants Another War
That's why I took the attack on Egypt to mean. Apparently it was just a warning to the Egyptian generals.
Nothing about that raising tensions in the piece?
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"Israeli joy gives way to anxiety over swap of prisoners with Hamas" October 13, 2011|By Aron Heller, Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Israeli euphoria over a deal to free a soldier held for five years by Hamas gave way yesterday to growing anxiety that the swap for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of them convicted of murder, could lead to new violence.
When Israelis first got word Tuesday night of the deal to free Sergeant Gilad Schalit, they erupted in spontaneous celebrations. But that joy was tempered when they learned that about 300 Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis would be among the 1,027 released in exchange.
“If many terrorists are released in this deal, it will be an immense incentive to kill Israelis and to carry out further abductions,’’ said Israeli Cabinet minister Uzi Landau, one of just three who voted against the swap. “This deal will be a huge victory for terror. It will be a blow to Israel’s security and deterrent capability.’’ Hawkish opposition groups warned of a new violent Palestinian uprising led by those released.
Khaled Mashaal, the Hamas leader in Syria, pledged Tuesday night that those released “will return to … the national struggle,’’ a comment that only stoked Israeli fears that they may pay a heavy price for the deal.
In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, where Schalit is believed to be held, militants went even further, threatening to capture more Israeli soldiers....
Which "militants" said that?
Schalit was captured more than five years ago in a cross-border raid from Gaza and his plight has captivated Israelis, who have held large rallies for his release. Throughout his captivity, Hamas refused to allow the Red Cross to visit him and only released a brief audio recording and videotaped statement confirming that he was alive....
Related: Red Cross Monitors Barred From Guantánamo
And I must admit I stand corrected: for years I thought Schalit was simply holed-up in a Tel Aviv hotel room. I was wrong. One wonders how he survived Operation Cast Lead.
Both Israel and Hamas credited Egypt with brokering the deal....
In Gaza, there was a carnival-like atmosphere with Palestinians flooding the streets to celebrate the deal. The plight of prisoners is equally emotional among Palestinians.
Then why save it for the end of the piece?
Nearly every Palestinian has a relative who has been imprisoned by Israel or has spent time behind bars himself.
That's an important item, doughn'cha think?
Hamas officials said that nearly all of the group’s demands had been met.
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And now, the strings:
"Many freed Palestinians to be deported" October 14, 2011|By Ibrahim Barzak, Associated Press
GAZA CITY - A Hamas official said yesterday that nearly 200 of the 450 Palestinians to be freed in the first phase of a swap for a captured Israeli soldier will not be allowed to return to their homes in the West Bank, Gaza, or East Jerusalem, suggesting that a substantial number may face deportation....
The deportations would be a blow to the prisoners’ families, many of whom have waited decades to see their loved ones.
Hamas may come under fire from Palestinian critics for agreeing to so many deportations after it repeatedly said it would fight to allow prisoners to return home.
Hamas officials note that Israel wanted far more prisoners deported and that the release of so many Palestinians itself is a victory.
Israel pressed for the deportation of Palestinian prisoners who they worried would pose a security risk to the Jewish state if they were released back into their own communities. Most of those Israel objects to are blamed for masterminding militant attacks or causing Israeli deaths.
The first phase of the deal will probably be concluded next Tuesday or Wednesday, said another Hamas official, Saleh Aruri.
Other parties involved in the deal - Egyptian mediators and Israeli officials - have not confirmed a day. Aruri was one of the four Hamas officials involved in negotiations for the swap.
Aruri said Israeli prison authorities would hand over Palestinian prisoners to the International Committee of the Red Cross, while they would transfer Schalit to Egyptian authorities.
“Israel will hand over our beloved brothers and sisters,’’ said Aruri, speaking to a television station loyal to the militant group.
Yesterday, Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal was in Cairo meeting with Egyptian intelligence chief Mourad Mowafi to discuss the logistics of the release.
Egypt is credited with playing a main role in brokering the swap deal.
The Hamas official who offered a breakdown of the first phase of prisoners said they would include seven who have served around three decades in Israeli jails....
While the crimes the men were sentenced for were violent - and deadly - the case of prisoners in Israeli jails is deeply sensitive to Palestinians. Most Palestinians have either served time in an Israeli jail, or know somebody who has.
Schalit’s plight mesmerized Israel, a country where most adults are expected to undertake military conscription and see their government as responsible for ensuring their safety while serving their country.
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"Israeli president begins signing pardons
JERUSALEM - Israel’s president yesterday began the process of formally pardoning more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners who are to be exchanged for an Israeli soldier held by Gaza militants for five years. A spokeswoman for President Shimon Peres said he received the files of hundreds of prisoners set for release in the first phase of the deal and has 48 hours to sign the pardons. The swap will likely occur Tuesday. Under the deal, 1,027 Palestinians - including some behind attacks on Israelis - will released in two stages in return for Sergeant Gilad Schalit, who was captured by Hamas-backed militants in a 2006 cross-border raid (AP)."
If it was cross-border. What border would that be anyway? Israel has never declared any.
"Israel releases 1st prisoner-swap list" October 17, 2011|By Ethan Bronner and Stephen Farrell, New York Times
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israel yesterday released the names of the first 477 Palestinian prisoners that it will exchange for a soldier held by the militant faction Hamas, and the list revealed why the country has found the trade so wrenching: The majority of the inmates were convicted of manslaughter, attempted murder, or intentionally causing death.
Convicted in Israeli courts, right?
Those being freed include the founders of Hamas’s armed wing and militants who kidnapped and killed Israeli soldiers and civilians. A planner of the 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria that killed 15 will walk out of prison, as will a woman who used the Internet to lure a lovesick Israeli teenager to a Palestinian city and had him murdered.
Most of the prisoners were serving life sentences, some for being involved in attacks like the 2001 bombing of a Tel Aviv nightclub that killed 21 people and a suicide bombing a year later of a Netanya hotel in which 29 died.
Notice nothing about Operation Cast Lead or any of the Israeli sniper shootings, etc, etc?
Related: Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Oh, NOW IT ALL MAKES SENSE!
The Israeli soldier in the trade, Staff Sergeant Gilad Schalit, was seized by Hamas militants in a cross-border raid more than five years ago and held in Gaza.
The exchange of the first batch of prisoners, which includes 27 women, is set for tomorrow.
Why no mention of the 300 children?
Yesterday, they were bused to central prisons where their health and identities were to be checked. In two months, 550 more prisoners will be released, but their names have not been published.
A handful of the most important prisoners in Israel’s jails will not be freed, including Marwan Barghouti, a major force behind the second intifada; his relative Abdullah Barghouti, a top bomb maker; and Ahmed Saadat, the coordinator of the murder of Rehavam Zeevi, an Israeli government minister.
Some 200 of those being freed will not be permitted to return to the West Bank but will be sent either to Gaza or into exile, many to Qatar and Turkey. A small number will be permitted back after three years.
Many Israelis have questioned whether the country is paying too high a price for Schalit’s freedom, contending that many of the freed prisoners could return to violent activities and that the deal has boosted Hamas at the expense of more moderate Palestinians. Families of Israeli victims of militant attacks have voiced anguish over the deal, and several have filed court appeals in an attempt to block the swap, although that is considered unlikely.
Palestinians, preparing for the release of their loved ones, disputed the terms of the debate in Israel. Relatives said holding prisoners from occupied lands inside Israel violated international law. They said Israeli military trials involved secret evidence and standards of proof that would be unacceptable in many Western countries. And they noted that of the 6,000 or so remaining Palestinian prisoners in Israel, hundreds were being held without being charged while others were held under administrative detention for crimes amounting to political activism.
The list includes Rawhi Mushtaha and Yehya Sinwar, two founders of Al Majd, a forerunner of Hamas’s military wing. Al Majd killed Palestinian collaborators, cracked down on behavior regarded as immoral, and gathered weapons. Both were arrested in early 1988, less than two months after the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising and the formal creation of Hamas by Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
Related:
Hamas, Son of Israel
Israel's Dirty Secret
Whaaaaaaat?
Mushtaha, 52, was serving four life sentences for murder through an act of terror, military exercises, manslaughter, and incitement. Speaking in her Gaza City home yesterday, Mushtaha’s wife, Raeda, wearing a full face niqab veil, confirmed that her husband was a founder of Al Majd. Asked if he regretted his actions, she said, “No.’’
Although the outlines of the deal between Israel and Hamas have been on the table for two years, it was Hamas’s willingness to abandon a handful of top prisoners and accept exile for others that allowed the exchange to go forward.
At the same time, Israel yielded on the number permitted back to their homes in the West Bank rather than insisting on exile. And it agreed to let out some Israeli Arabs, something it had previously rejected for fear of increasing links between Hamas and Israeli Arabs.
The deal improved Hamas’s political standing over its rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
All to punish Abbas for going to the U.N.
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"Palestinians, Israelis set for exchange of prisoners" October 18, 2011|By Stephen Farrell and Ethan Bronner, New York Times
RAFAH CROSSING, Gaza Strip - The cactus-lined highway that leads to this international gateway between Gaza and Egypt was draped in green bunting and flags, as Hamas stamped its Islamist mark across the scene of today’s long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange....
Both Israel and the divided Palestinian leadership - Fatah runs the West Bank while Hamas controls the Gaza Strip - made elaborate preparations for the handover, ending five years in captivity for one Israeli soldier, Staff Sergeant Gilad Schalit; hundreds of the Palestinians have been held much longer.
Rafah is the Gaza of Gaza - isolated, poor and, for years, all but cut off from the rest of the coastal strip during the era of Israeli settlements here, which ended in 2005.
The community is not just where the Schalit saga was ending, but it was also where it began. In June 2006, Hamas and two other militant factions mounted a surprise raid on an Israeli military post at Kerem Shalom, after having dug a long tunnel beneath the Rafah sands under the border, capturing Schalit. He has not been seen in public since.
He is the first captured Israeli soldier to be returned home alive in 26 years.
In Israel, there were elaborate preparations for his return, a calibrated mix of relieved celebration and acknowledgment - both of the pain and death that the released Palestinians caused many families and of the risk that their release may pose.
Several petitions to block or alter the exchange were rejected by Israel’s high court yesterday. The courtroom scene was emotionally charged, with families who lost members in terrorist attacks assailing the Schalit family and the government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent letters to the bereaved families saying he understood their heartache....
Plans called for the Palestinian prisoners to board buses to start their journeys to freedom once Schalit was known to have crossed from Gaza into Egyptian Sinai. He is to be taken to Israel, checked preliminarily for physical and mental health, given a new uniform to wear, then taken to an air base to see his family and meet Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and the military chief of staff, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz.
After a more extensive medical examination and some time with the officials and his family, Schalit and his family are to be taken by helicopter to their home in northern Israel. Reporters and onlookers will be barred from his neighborhood to give the family a measure of privacy. Chiefs of major Israeli news organizations vowed to respect the restrictions.
In Gaza, after a greeting ceremony at Rafah, Hamas planned a huge welcoming rally in the center of Gaza City, where the prisoners would be paraded at a specially built stage in a park....
In the West Bank, President Mahmoud Abbas was to greet the prisoners to be released there at a ceremony in Ramallah. Although the exchange was negotiated by his rivals in Hamas, Abbas wanted to make it as much of a nonpartisan Palestinian achievement as possible.
That was actually the way I saw it.
Atallah Abu al-Sebah, Hamas’s minister of prisoners’ affairs, said the prisoners released in Gaza would first be greeted inside the Rafah crossing by 200 officials and up to four members of each prisoner’s family. There would be a “short official reception,’’ including the Palestinian national anthem.
Sebah said that any prisoners who needed accommodation, including those who did not have families in the strip, would be put up in hotels for one month, irrespective of whether they were associated with Hamas, Fatah, or other factions. They would then be moved to apartments being prepared for them around Gaza.
“We call upon our Palestinian people to put our brothers from the West Bank in their hearts and eyes, regardless of their affiliation,’’ he said. “It is enough that they belong to Palestine.’’
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"Acrimony exists amid prisoner swap" October 19, 2011|By Ethan Bronner, New York Times
JERUSALEM - Just off the bus in Gaza after six years in an Israeli prison, one of hundreds traded to Hamas for an Israeli soldier, Wafa al-Bass declared her next goal: abduct more Israeli soldiers.
It's been almost two months.
Others who returned said they could not feel satisfaction until the thousands of remaining Palestinian prisoners were freed.
And Israelis, at first thrilled at the sight of their liberated soldier, were angered by how he looked - frail, wan, and underfed.
It was a day when many things went right. Promises were kept, an agreement between sworn enemies was implemented, people wept with joy. The military chief of Hamas, Ahmed al-Jabari, one of the most wanted and despised men in Israel, was seen on television leading the freed Israeli, Sergeant First Class Gilad Schalit, from Gaza to liberty.
Some said all this should improve chances for peacemaking and reconciliation. But it was almost immediately clear the prisoner swap was also a source of acrimony....
Each side accused the other of mistreating its prisoners. Schalit, who was denied Red Cross visits throughout his imprisonment, was pushed into an uncomfortable interview on Egyptian television before being handed over to Israel, and Israelis watched his measured responses and labored breathing with fury.
Hamas officials said their members had been subject in Israeli prisons to “torture, compulsion, and revenge.’’
Israelis whose loved ones were killed by some of those released said the deal was justice undone and capitulation to a sworn enemy.
Hamas quickly called for its members to capture more Israeli soldiers in order to free the remaining 5,000 or so Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
Did they?
Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, a Hamas rival, also spoke of the need to free the remaining prisoners. He made that point in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he welcomed about 100 freed prisoners in a celebration. And although he has long focused on popular, nonviolent struggle, he is facing pressure to take a harder line as Hamas’s accomplishments seem more tangible than his bid to win Palestinian statehood through the United Nations.
Look at them try to make Abbas into some sort of Gandhi.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened that any freed prisoner who returned to violence would pay for it. Such a person is “taking his life into his hands,’’ he said at the Tel Nof air base south of Tel Aviv after embracing Schalit and handing him over to his parents.
In the 10 months since many across the Arab world began rising up against entrenched dictators, Israel has found itself more nervous and more isolated.
Sorry, but they brought it on themselves with their behavior.
A stronger Hamas could corner it further in the region as the Islamist organization improves ties to Turkey and Egypt and maintains an alliance with its longtime sponsor, Iran.
Hamas’s own concerns about its future if it loses its base in the Syrian capital, Damascus, appear to have driven it partly to compromise on demands for the release of certain prisoners in exchange for Schalit. Bashar Assad of Syria is facing a fierce popular uprising, and his forces have killed an estimated 3,000 demonstrators. Hamas does not want to be caught in the middle.
And Israel, fearing changes in Egypt after pending elections there that could empower the Muslim Brotherhood, saw that if the ruling military council in Cairo, with which it has cordial relations, leaves power, there might be no deal to free Schalit. So it accepted some prisoners into the West Bank that it had previously rejected.
There were people watching the events in Israel who found cause for optimism.
“I believe the masses everywhere want peace,’’ said Isaac Herzog, a Labor Party member of Parliament. “The Gaza leadership is stuck in its rhetoric of revolution and resistance. But the people are fed up with their leadership. It’s a whole new ballgame in the Middle East now.’’
He is 100% RIGHT about THAT!!
Some Israelis did not agree.
“I am a peace activist, but it takes two to tango,’’ said Yossi Peled, a sociologist who lives in the northern community of Mitzpe Hila near the Schalit family. “For five years they did not let anyone see Gilad. His father made clear that he was harshly treated, especially in the first years. So how can this bring the sides closer?’’
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For Palestinians, the return of relatives held for years in Israeli prisons was a source of great elation. Celebrations were held in the center of Gaza and Ramallah with vows not to forget those remaining behind. The day began with mosque loudspeakers in Gaza crying “God is great’’ and “Victory to God’’ as people awaited the arrival of 477 prisoners. An additional 550 are expected to be released in two months.
The Anatolian news agency reported that 42 Palestinians were being relocated to Turkey, Syria, and Qatar. Eleven arrived today after midnight in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, with their arrival broadcast live on television.
The first passenger off the plane was a middle-aged woman wearing a white coat, and 10 men followed her. They flashed the V sign for victory as they stood by the plane, and they kissed the ground. The former prisoners, who were not identified by Turkish officials, left the airport in two black vans for an unknown destination....
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