Israeli Soldier Returns Home

After more than five years in Hamas captivity, Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit arrived home Tuesday. 

In a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas, Schalit was exchanged for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.

The swap will be performed in a series of delicate stages. 477 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons were released Tuesday morning and an additional 550 prisoners will be released in two months.

Schalit, 25, was moved from Gaza into Egypt where Israeli medical personnel examined him.

Subsequently, Schalit was taken to a military base in Tel Nof, Israel where he was greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and embraced by his mother, father, grandfather, sister and brother.

After being welcomed home by more than 200 supporters and activists in his doorway, Schalit entered his home in Mitzpe Hila, a town in Northern Israel near the Lebanese border.

Medical examinations showed that Schalit was malnourished, pale and limping but otherwise in reasonable health. His mental health is still unknown.

Father of Detained Israeli Soldier Says Son’s Continued Captivity and Palestinian Bid for Statehood are Incompatible

by Eli Fink

The father of an Isreali soldier held by Hamas in Gaza says the UN General Assembly should resist supporting a bid for Palestinian recognition at the world body until his son is released. 

“The Palestinians cannot go on with this grave breach of international law and humanitarian law and at the same time ask for legitimacy and to be a member state of the United Nations- It doesn’t go together.” Noam Shalit, father of Gilad Shalit, told Talk Radio News. “We are not asking the leaders of the world not to vote on behalf of the Palestinians [at the GA meetings this month], but to stop breaching international law and humanitarian law and release our son unconditionally.”   

 Shalit is meeting with UN diplomats in New York this week, the most recent attempt in a long list of family efforts to secure Gilad’s freedom. He and his wife Aviva have already set up a protest tent outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem and have been strong proponents of a prisoner exchange deal between the Israeli government and Hamas.

Gilad Shalit was a nineteen-year-old corporal in the Israeli Defenses Forces in 2006 when he was abducted by militants associated with the Gaza-based Palestinian faction Hamas. His current condition and the terms of his detention are unknown as no outside visitors have been permitted to see him. In the fall of 2009 Hamas put out a 2 minute video of the former tank driver which proved he was still alive in exchange for the release of twenty female Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.