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Israel, Hamas in mutual gestures on prisoners
Wed Sep 30, 2009 10:25am EDT
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By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) - Israel will free 20 Palestinian women from jail as early as Friday in exchange for a videotape from Hamas proving an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip since 2006 is alive, officials on both sides said on Wednesday.
Egyptian and German mediators are continuing to work on a final deal to swap the soldier, Gilad Shalit, for hundreds of Hamas prisoners. The negotiations are part of international efforts to ease Israel's blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
"It is important for the entire world to know that Gilad Shalit is alive and well and that Hamas is responsible for his well-being and his fate," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement.
Shalit, now 23, was spirited into the Gaza Strip by Islamist militants who tunneled into Israel three years ago in a raid in which two Israeli soldiers and two of the attackers were killed.
An Israeli official said the handover of the 20 women and the tape should take place on Friday, at the end of a two-day period when Israeli citizens can appeal in court against their release, an Israeli official said.
He added that a German mediator had already seen the video and believed it genuinely showed Shalit during recent weeks -- and certainly after Israel's offensive in Gaza in December and January in which some 1,400 Palestinians were reported killed.
The video lasts about a minute, said a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the Hamas allies that took part in the raid in which Shalit was captured.
"It shows Shalit alive and moving," the spokesman, Abu Mujahed, said.
Announcement of the pending exchange was the first major sign of progress in efforts to put together a deal between Israel and Hamas Islamists.
But an Israeli official cautioned that "lengthy and difficult negotiations" were still ahead before any final swap.
JOY IN GAZA
One of the women set for release, Fatima Younis Zaq, gave birth in jail to a son, who is currently with her. An Islamic Jihad member, Zaq was arrested in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on suspicion of planning a suicide bombing.
At her family home in the Gaza Strip, relatives hugged and kissed, and her husband said: "We were so happy to get the news. We hope all other prisoners will be released."
Zaq is the only Gaza resident due to be freed. The other 19 were from the West Bank, where Hamas's secular rivals from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party hold sway.
Netanyahu has faced mounting public pressure to win freedom for Shalit, who also holds French citizenship, in a deal that could involve releasing Hamas militants behind deadly attacks. Continued...
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