The Knesset Tuesday afternoon discussed a suggestion by Knesset Member Ilan Gil’on (Meretz) that a law require the government bring kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit back home by a pre-determined time.
MK Gil’on stood at the Knesset podium in a moment of silence as a tribute to Shalit. The legislature will vote on his proposal on Wednesday.
Most of the MKs participating in the discussion urged his immediate return but did not relate to the security dangers that caused the previous government to reject an agreement for his freedom.
The Olmert administration, in a wave of media coverage that raised expectations that Shalit would return to his family home, assuming he is alive, wanted to free hundreds of Hamas terrorists, many of whom were involved in multiple murders of Israelis. The Cabinet rejected the idea after security and defense officials warned that exchanging the terrorists for Shalit would endanger the country.
Most of Tuesday’s speakers echoed the call for his speedy return, to be engineered by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Haggai Hadas, his newly-appointed point man for the mission of negotiating Shalit's release.
National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari was the only speaker to address head-on the history of terrorists who continued to attack and kill Israelis after their freedom. “Don't free more terrorists,” he asserted. ”Doing so endangers Israel and causes an escalation in bloodshed. It advances terrorists’ status.”
Virtually all of the others speakers including Arab, Kadima, Meretz and Labor MKs, said that Shalit and his family are suffering too much for the government to continue to negotiate how many and which terrorists to release.
MK Taleb El-Sana (Raam-Taal) said that there should be no distinction based on whether a terrorist “has blood on his hands.” He explained that Israel originally suggested releasing 80 terrorists, "then 105, then 200, and now 380 and in another month or year there will no other choice other than to release whoever Hamas wants."
Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev warned that Hamas “must know that an agreement for Shalit will cost them” and added that the Knesset debate is a sign to every member in the Israel defense Forces that the government is concerned about returning kidnapped soldiers.
A day before the Knesset debate, Dr. Ahmed Yousef, a senior advisor to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, released a statement following the appointment of Haggai Hadas in which he said that talks for the release of Shalit must resume where they left off.
The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, on its side, is concerned that Israeli concessions to Hamas would boost the popularity of Hamas and increase the chances that Hamas would defeat Fatah in the elections scheduled for next year.
Shalit, a member of an IDF was kidnapped on June 25, 2006 in a raid near the Kerem Shalom crossing that killed two of his comrades. Ehud Olmert, who was Prime Minister at the time, vowed that he would not negotiate with terrorists for the return of the soldier. He later promised not to continue negotiating with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on a new PA state until the soldier was freed. However, he broke both promises. The current government, too, has not made negotiations on a PA state conditional on Shalit's release.
The soldier is presumed to be alive, but his physical and psychological conditions are not known. Israel allows Red Cross officials to visit terrorists in Israelis jails although the international organization has not convinced Hamas to allow it to visit Shalit, as requited by international law.