The relevant ministerial committee is seeking to find ways to up the number of terrorists - currently 70 - it will release in exchange for abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Hamas wants 1,000.
The country's current criteria do not allow it to release murderers - though this rule was broken in two instances in the last two prisoner releases. Samir Kuntar, released in July in exchange for the bodies of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, murdered three Israelis, including a toddler, and was responsible for the death of a fourth - a baby - in a 1979 terrorist attack in Nahariya. Last week, Olmert released 198 prisoners as a gesture to Abbas - including the murderer of yeshiva student Yehoshua Saloma in Hevron in 1980 (and of a fellow Arab inmate while in prison), and that of Tzila Galili in a bombing of the Petach Tikva market in 1977.
Hamas has provided Israel with a list of 450 prisoners whose release it demands in exchange for the release of Shalit. Shalit was kidnapped in June 2006 when terrorists tunneled under the Israel-Gaza border, killed two soldiers, and took him captive.
Israel has agreed to release 70 of the 450. Hamas has responded by upping the ante; a spokesman for the terror organization said it will demand 1,000, or more, terrorist in exchange for Shalit.
The ministerial committee in charge of terrorist-release affairs, headed by Vice Premier Chaim Ramon, convened on Sunday to discuss the matter. Two of the four members - Ministers Gideon Ezra and Ami Ayalon - say that Israel can permit itself to release murderers who have been imprisoned for a long while and who are over age 40, as they can be expected not to return to terrorism.
Ramon issued a statement saying that if Hamas does not reduce its demand - apparently referring to the original 450 - an agreement will not be able to be reached. He implied that Israel will try to find ways to include another 380 terrorists on the list of terrorists it agrees to free, among them some from the original Hamas list. The committee is set to convene again later this week.
Shalit Family: No More Goodwill Terrorist Releases
In the interim, the family of the abducted Israeli soldier made a public call for the government to stop releasing any more terrorists, in goodwill gestures or otherwise, if not in the framework of a deal for their son.