Red Cross visit to Shalit not possible: Hamas

By MOHAMMED MAR'I | ARAB NEWS

RAMALLAH: Hamas rejected Friday an Israeli demand to allow representatives of the International Red Cross to visit kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Thursday that Israel would not lift its blockade of the Gaza Strip unless Hamas agreed to allow representatives of the Red Cross to visit Shalit.

The deputy chief of Hamas Politburo, Mousa Abu Marzouk, said in a press statement that the group will not allow visitors because that would compromise the secrecy of his hiding place. Abu Marzouk added that if Israel knew of Shalit's whereabouts in the Gaza Strip and could not gain his release, it would bomb the location in order to kill him. This would endanger the lives of Palestinians living in the vicinity, the official said.

According to Abu Marzouk, there is no connection between the blockade of Gaza Strip and the imprisonment of Shalit as Israel claims. He said Shalit's conditions are better than those of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Abu Marzouk said that Shalit is enjoying his full rights unlike Palestinian prisoners.

He said negotiations to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas which would allow for the release of the Israeli soldier are currently frozen. Shalit has been in Palestinian captivity since he was captured in a 2006 cross-border raid.

In another development, Israeli policemen on Friday shot dead a Palestinian driver in Arab East Jerusalem after his car ran into them, an Israeli police spokesman and Palestinian medics said. It was unclear whether the incident, in which two officers were slightly wounded, was an accident or a deliberate attack.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers opened fire after a man whose car rammed into them, tried to flee on foot. Palestinian medical workers identified the victim as Ziad Al-Jolani.

— With input from agencies

Comments

BRIAN KEITH

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Why can't the Red Cross visit Gilad Shalit?

If his conditions are as good as Palestinian prisoners in Israel, as claimed by Abu Marzouk, why can't the Red Cross visit just like they are allowed to in Israel? It is cruel, against the Geneva Conventions, and against Islamic tradition not to allow humanitarian visits by independent observers.

HANY KAMEL

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Geneva Conventions??? you must be kidding, now everybody remembered it, 11000 prisoners in the Israeli jails, and you are asking for Geneva conventions? what a horrible unfair world, soon Islam will rise again to teach the world how justice and peace were spread at it's time, and how people had real manners and faith.
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