Hamas: Shalit file closed, captured soldier sentenced to "long prison sentence"

Date: 30 / 03 / 2009  Time:  14:30
Gaza – Ma’an Exclusive –

 International mediation efforts over the exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel have failed, Hamas leader and party spokesperson for the Shalit file Osama Al-Mazini said Monday.

Noting that Egyptian mediators moved the process further than it had ever gone, Al-Mazini blamed “Israeli stubbornness” for the failure of the talks.

“I was really disappointed,” the Hamas official said in an exclusive statement to Ma’an, “and I don’t want to mention the Israeli response was to the issue.”

Al-Mazini called the Israeli decision to halt the talks akin to “sentencing Shalit to a very long prison term,” and wondered when they would actually work to get the captured soldier home. “We are not asking for the impossible,” he said, “We have logical demands” and noted that it was Israel that cut short the talks.

Shalit was captured in 2006, shortly before Hizbullah fighters took two more Israeli soldiers on the Israel-Lebanon border. On 16 July 2008, Israel completed a prisoner swap of five Lebanese prisoners, including Samir Quntar, and the bodies of 190 Palestinian and Lebanese fighters held by Israel. They were exchanged for the corpses of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the two captured Israeli soldiers from 2006.