DUSHANBE, October 18, 2011, Asia-Plus – International media outlets reported on Tuesday that Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has arrived back in Israel, following his release from five years” captivity as part of a prisoner deal with Hamas.
Al-Jazeera reports that in an interview with Egyptian television at Rafah, Shalit said that he hoped that the deal that allowed for his release on Tuesday would promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
According to Reuters, Shalit, 25, was taken across the frontier from the Gaza Strip into Egypt”s Sinai peninsula and driven to Israel”s Vineyard of Peace border crossing, where a helicopter awaited to fly him to an Israeli air base for a reunion with his parents. Simultaneously Israel freed 477 Palestinian prisoners, most of them to the Gaza Strip, where Hamas leaders greeted former prisoners piling off buses bearing Red Cross insignia.
The BBC reports that more than 1,000 Palestinians are due to be freed in the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.
The deal received a green light from Israel”s Supreme Court late on Monday after it rejected petitions from the public to prevent the mass release of prisoners, many serving life sentences imposed by Israeli courts for deadly attacks.
Shalit was abducted in June 2006 by militants who tunneled into Israel from the Gaza Strip and surprised his tank crew, killing two of his comrades. He was whisked back into Gaza and has since been held incommunicado.
The deal with Hamas, a group classified by the United States and European Union as a terrorist organization over its refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, is not expected to spur peace negotiations.
Political commentators said it appeared unlikely the prisoner exchange agreed by the two bitter enemies would have any immediate impact on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that broke down last year.
Saree Makdisi, an author and professor at the University of California, told Al Jazeera that the value of the prisoner swap should not be over-estimated. “We have to remember that the Israelis raid the West Bank literally on a nightly basis, usually ten times a day, an average of 300-400 raids a month,” he said. “On all these raids, they collect prisoner after prisoner, so in an average month, they capture 300-400 prisoners, held against international law, held in appalling circumstances.”
