GAZA CITY: Hamas yesterday insisted it would not discuss releasing captured Israel soldier Gilad Shalit as part negotiations with Israel for a lasting truce in and around the Gaza Strip.
A Hamas delegation said this in Cairo yesterday to Omar Suleiman, the head of Egypt’s intelligence services who is mediating between Israel and the Islamist movement, said Taher Al-Nunu, a spokesman for the Hamas government in Gaza. “The delegation made it clear to Suleiman it rejects any linkage of the truce question and that of the release of the soldier Gilad Shalit,” Nunu said in a statement.
“We blame Israel for preventing the implementation of the truce ... and we reject blackmail attempts by Israel,” he added. Israel has linked a truce agreement to the release of Shalit, who has been held in Gaza since he was seized in a cross-border raid by Palestinian militants in June 2006.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday said Shalit’s release took priority over any other consideration in the negotiations for a lasting cease-fire.
Nunu said that the Hamas delegation in Egypt on Sunday reached “a clear agreement on the truce” but that Israel “raised the question of Gilad Shalit at the last minute in a bid to include it in the accord.”
Hamas insists it will only release Shalit in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Meanwhile, sporadic rocket attacks and Israeli retaliatory strikes from and in Gaza have continued since Israel ended its 22-day offensive there. Two such rockets landed in southern Israel yesterday, an Israeli military spokesman in Tel Aviv said, while a third struck late Sunday. The attacks came amid persistent local media reports that a deal between Israel and Hamas may be near.
Israeli newspapers reported yesterday that the Israeli Cabinet is expected to convene tomorrow, and vote on a proposal that includes both a truce and a prisoner-exchange deal with Hamas, which would likely be carried out in stages.
Meanwhile, one Palestinian was killed in an explosion in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia. Five others were injured, three of them critically, hospital officials said.
