The campaign to free kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit has taken on a new angle as several organizations band together to pressure Hamas. The latest campaign involves stripping terrorist prisoners of their privileges in an attempt to convince Hamas that time is not on its side.
Previous Shalit rallies have generally focused on raising awareness of the young Israeli's plight, instead of promoting a specific strategy to win his safe return.
Organizations involved in the new campaign have kicked off an educational initiative in Tel Aviv. They plan to explain their view to the general public, in hopes of increasing pressure on the government to enact their proposal.
A similar initiative is being promoted in the Knesset, where MK Danny Danon (Likud) is pushing a bill that would curtail the right of terrorist prisoners to receive visits in jail until Shalit is freed.
The idea behind the campaign is that if Hamas-affiliated prisoners in Israel were held in conditions similar to those granted Hamas kidnapping victims, they would quickly begin to push Hamas to make a deal with Israel for Shalit's release in order to restore their privileges.
"Making life harder for security prisoners in jails in Israel will undoubtedly speed the process of winning Shalit's return,” said Chaim Glick, a former Prison Services worker and currently the General Manager of Bar Ilan University.
Glick warned as early as 2008 that kindness to terrorist prisoners delays Shalit's release. Israel grants its prisoners more privileges than their counterparts in America or Europe, and has plenty of room to cut back luxuries without violating the Geneva convention, he said this week.
Another supporter of the new campaign is Miki Goldwasser, whose son Ehud was kidnapped in the Hizbullah attack that started the Second Lebanon War. Goldwasser said Sunday that terrorist prisoners currently receive privileges that make life in prison as good as life in a luxury hotel – an at the expense of the Israeli taxpayer. She was quoted by Voice of Israel government radio.
Ehud Goldwasser and fellow reservist Eldad Regev were held captive by Hizbullah until the two were returned to Israel in a prisoner exchange in 2008 – at which point it was revealed to the public that they had died shortly after their capture, and Israel would be receiving only bodies.