Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu denies that a deal for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit is imminent. Speaking against the backdrop of reports that an arrangement might be concluded this week, Netanyahu said, “There will be no breakthrough tomorrow or the next day. There has been a lot of exaggeration in the news reports.”
The remarks were made, as has become customary, before the weekly Sunday morning Cabinet meeting.
Egyptian and German sources are reporting that negotiations to free the captive soldier – from whom no sign of life has been received in 14 months – are on the verge of completion. It is said that Israel will release 450 Palestinian terrorists from prison as a first-stage gesture, in exchange for Shalit.
Gilad, now 23, was kidnapped by Hamas-associated terrorists who tunneled into Israel under the Gaza border over three years ago. Two soldiers were killed in the incident. No Israeli or neutral observers have ever been permitted to visit him. A tape recording and three letters have been received from Shalit over the years, but none since June 2008.
Coincidentally or not, it was around that time that Israel returned five live terrorists, including child-murderer and Hizbullah hero Samir Kuntar, as well as the bodies of nearly 200 Hizbullah terrorists and Lebanese infiltrators, in exchange for the bodies of two soldiers who had been kidnapped two years before. Israel had not been officially informed that its two soldiers were dead until the moment that the exchange was actually carried out, and much of the populace had been of the opinion that they were alive.
The German weekly Der Spiegel claims that German mediators had set the middle of this week as the deadline for Hamas to respond to the proposed deal.