The office of Israel’s outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has released an update this evening, suggesting that there has been no progress in talks in Egypt with Hamas on his last-minute push to get IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit released. A Cabinet meeting scheduled for today was earlier postponed until tomorrow.
Much press speculation in Israel was that a favorable deal was imminent.
But — perhaps in an effort to put last-minute pressure on Hamas — the Prime Minister’s office’s statement said, discouragingly, that “it became clear during the discussions that Hamas had hardened its position, reneged on understandings that had been formulated over the past year and raised extreme demands despite the generous proposals that had been raised in this round in order to advance and exhaust the negotiations and bring about the soldier’s release”.
The statement said that “Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s representatives to the Egyptian-mediated talks on the issue of a deal for the release of abducted soldier Gilad Shalit returned to Israel this evening (Monday), 16.3.09. The two men – Israel Security Agency Director Yuval Diskin and the Prime Minister’s special envoy, Ofer Dekel – updated Prime Minister Olmert on the results of the marathon and intensive discussions that they had conducted in recent days … Prime Minister Olmert has summoned a Cabinet meeting for tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday), 17.3.09, during which ministers will receive full details on the results of the contacts that were held”.
Earlier, I have written that: “There have been various news reports over the past days tracing the up and down hopes for the intra-Palestinian talks that may or may not lead to a new unity government, and for the Egyptian-brokered talks with Israel and with Hamas that may or may not lead to an agreed cease-fire (in Gaza only?), and to the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israel’s Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was captured in a cross-border raid in late June 2006 (in retaliation for which Israel caused major damage to Gaza’s only electricity-generating power station, and again damaged the runways and other installations at currently-defunct Yasser Arafat international airport, which is actually rather near the Kerem Shalom crossing where Shalit was siezed).
According to reports, Israel is now ready to release exactly the prisoners that Hamas has named over a year ago — but not to let them go home. Israel is demanding that some of them be sent to Gaza rather than to the West Bank, or abroad — along the lines of what Palestinians regard as a totally unsatisfactory and still-festering ‘solution’ to the Israeli siege on Palestinian gunmen holed up in Bethlehem’s Nativity Church in 2002.
Palestinian men were deported from Bethlehem to Gaza, and to various points in Europe, and their situation was supposed to have been reviewed after a year. But, as Saddam Hussein’s officials used to say about the UNSC sanctions imposed on his country following its invasion of occupation of Kuwait (but not of Iraq’s invasion of Iran a decade earlier) — there is no ending date. The situation has been left open-ended, and up to the whim of the stronger parties.
The 2003 Road Map recognized that this specific issue of deportations was a problem. So, it is hard to see why and how Israel is asking for this now. Does Israel think that a negotiated, agreed deportation of the Palestinians it is holding prisoner would be legal, or any more acceptable, or in conformity to the Road Map obligations? Would the Quartet (US, Russia, EU and UN) agree to such a re-writing of the Road Map?
The Road Map specifically requires the Government of Israel to, among other things, ‘take no actions undermining trust, including deportations, attack on civilians; confiscation and/or demolition of Palestinian homes and property, as a punitive measure or to facilitate Israeli construction; destruction of Palestinian institutions and infrastructure’, etc. This is right up there in Phase One of the Road Map” …
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