Following a march in Tel Aviv on Monday, the parents of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit are scheduled to meet Tuesday morning with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the first time since he took office.
The Shalits are expected to tell the prime minister that he will not have a grace period from pressure to secure the release of their son from the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Gilad has been held by the Hamas-led Gazans since being abducted during a June 25, 2006 enemy raid on an IDF base near Gaza. Two soldiers were killed in the attack.
Negotiations for the release of the young corporal were carried out between Hamas and the former Israeli government by way of Egyptian mediators. Hamas has demanded the release of over 1,000 terrorists currently held in Israeli jails as ransom for their Jewish captive. The Olmert administration agreed to a partial release, according to its own shorter list of jailed terrorists. After talks broke down in Cairo, there were additional, unconfirmed reports that Israeli negotiators met directly with some of the imprisoned Hamas members to push forward the trade.
For his part, Netanyahu is expected to give the Shalits his commitment to the return of Israeli captives.
On Monday evening, more than 150 people, most of them youngsters, marched in the streets of Tel Aviv in a call for the Netanyahu government to move quickly in obtaining the release of the abducted Israeli soldier. They called on people in area restaurants, coffee shops and stores to join them en route to Likud party headquarters. In a takeoff on a Passover song, there were placards which read, "Big Shame! Big Shame! Spring is Here, Gilad's Not Coming."
Eyal Raz, Gilad Shalit's cousin, was quoted by the Yediot Aharonot news agency as saying that it was painful for Gilad not to be with the family for the feast of freedom. He added that the lack of results from recent demonstrations in Jerusalem did not take the wind out of the sails of the family, but strengthened it. Hadar Miller, an activist in the Friends of Gilad Shalit Task Force, said that the Netanyahu government should not be given a grace period.
The Shalit family and some supporters had held an ongoing vigil outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem at the tail end of the term of the previous government. They had hoped that the public pressure would force Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to reach a last-minute ransom agreement with Hamas in his last few days. When the Israeli negotiator returned from Cairo empty-handed, Olmert said publicly that there were red lines Israel was not willing to cross.