GAZA: Israel freed a Palestinian woman prisoner to the Gaza Strip on Sunday, the last of 20 it has swapped for a videotape that provided the first visible evidence that a soldier captured in 2006 was still alive.
Rawda Saed was taken to the coastal territory in a Red Cross vehicle, then driven to the offices of Gaza’s Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who said the prisoner releases suggested there was progress toward a deal to free Sgt. Gilad Shalit.
“We view with relief the serious movement in the prisoner swap file,” Haniyeh said. “We stress that we will not abandon our responsibility toward our male and female prisoners.”
The German- and Egyptian-mediated swap had stirred expectations that a deal could soon be reached to release Shalit in exchange for a wider Israeli prisoner amnesty, but officials on both sides said there was still some hard bargaining ahead.
Saed was arrested in 2007 while crossing the Gaza-Israel border. She had cited medical reasons for wanting to enter Israel, which accused her of plotting a suicide bombing.
Israel freed 19 other Palestinian inmates on Friday then received the two-minute tape of Shalit, who looked healthy and sounded coherent. In a proof-of-life gesture by Hamas, he held up a copy of an Arabic-language newspaper dated Sept. 14.
On Sunday Israel also released a Hamas MP who had been held in prison for more than three years. MP Raed Al-Amla returned to his home village of Qabalan south of the West Bank city of Nablus after ending a 41-month sentence in Israel prison, said Yaron Zamir, a prison service spokesman.
