'Tougher Stance on Hamas'

Israel has begun to tighten outside access to Hamas prisoners in the face of the terrorist organization's continued stubbornness in negotiations for the release of kidnapped IDF St. Sgt. Gilad Shalit.

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai rejected a bid by Hamas to conduct visits via audio-video links with its prisoners arrested by Israel in Judea and Samaria.

The request was presented to Vilnai by intermediaries from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Palestinian Authority.

Vilnai said Monday in the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Ma'ariv, "I told them to visit [captured IDF soldier] Gilad Shalit, and then we'll talk."

Hamas has not allowed any access to Shalit by the Red Cross, or anyone else, since he was abducted by terrorists from three groups under its umbrella on June 25, 2006. Two IDF soldiers were killed and a fourth soldier was critically wounded in the cross-border raid, which was carried out near the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Gaza.

"Today, more than two years later, his condition is still unclear," states the ICRC on its website. "The ICRC has made repeated but unsuccessful requests to visit him or be allowed to pass on family news."

The agency published on its site an interview conducted in August with Shalit's parents in which Gilad's father, Noam, said he was "disappointed that the ICRC is unable to impose its humanitarian agenda on a Palestinian organization and compel it to comply with the Geneva conventions and international humanitarian law.

"We would like the ICRC to be more assertive, more active and more persuasive. After all," he added, "Hamas often relies on the ICRC for humanitarian matters so we were expecting that, similarly, the ICRC would succeed in getting what it needs and wants from Hamas."

The International Red Cross also failed to gain access to kidnapped IDF reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, both of whom were kidnapped on the northern border by Hizbullah terrorists in an attack that ignited the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

The two soldiers, who were kidnapped less than a month after Shalit's abduction, were both killed immediately or shortly after their capture. Despite all efforts, their terrorist captors refused to release any information about them to the Red Cross or anyone else until their coffins crossed the border in exchange for living, healthy child murder Samir Kuntar and other terrorists this past summer.