Following a deal with Hamas negotiated with the help of Egypt and Germany, Shalit will be released into Egyptian hands before regaining Israel.
Once Shalit reaches the Sinai, Israel will release 27 female Palestinian prisoners.
After he sets foot on Israeli soil, another 450 Palestinian prisoners will be set free, the list having been compiled during the Hamas-Israel negotiations…
In two months, the agreement stipulates that Israel is to release an additional 550 prisoners, of its own choosing.
Israel has pledged however, to liberate security detainees, and not, to quote Haaretz, mere car thieves…
Of the 1007 Palestinians to be set free, 280 were serving life sentences in Israeli jails. All in all, according to the Israelis, they are responsible for the death of some 600 people…
The list of those being freed includes one of the founders of Hamas’ military wing, Yihya Sanawar.
Although all released detainees will be required to sign a statement vowing not to resort to violence in the future, Shin Bet, Israel’s national security agency expects that about 60% will probably do so anyway…
Hamas also made some concessions to clinch the deal.
Israel reserves the right, again with Hamas’ approval, oddly enough, to arrest or assassinate any released militant it chooses, should they be perceived as a potential threat to the state.
Furthermore, the agreement calls for the deportation of 203 Palestinians to Gaza, or foreign countries. Jordan and Turkey have been mentioned as possible new homes for these militants.
Israel had always refused to release so many prisoners it considered dangerous in exchange for Shalit’s liberation.
Why did it accept such terms now, five years after the young soldier's capture?
President Mahmoud Abbas’s attempts to gain UN recognition for the state of Palestine may have been the decisive factor in goading both sides to accept a deal that had been available for years…The Israelis were clearly intent on changing the subject and deflecting attention from the Abbas campaign.
Hamas is increasingly unpopular due to continued economic hardship imposed by Israel’s blockade of the territory, and its political isolation.
In addition, Hamas has thrown its support behind the Assad regime in Syria (one of its principle patrons), even though the latter has brutally cracked down on a popular uprising looked upon favorably by the peoples of the region (including Palestinians) and elsewhere.
Hamas’ leader Khaled Meshal lives in exile in Damascus…
Hamas was thus in dire need of a political boost.
The Islamic movement also managed to achieve what years of Israeli-Palestinian Authority negotiations never did: a mass release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails!
Their victory is another nail in the coffin of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues in the Fatah leadership. Again, as in the case of the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the Palestinians have learned that the diplomatic path leads them to a dead end, while terror gets settlers out of the territories and abductions spring hundreds of people out of jail, wrote Akiva Eldar, chief political columnist for the daily Haaretz.
Indeed, that was undoubtedly not lost on most Palestinians, thereby further discrediting the moribund peace process that has been agonizing for years and that the Quartet is now desperately seeking to resurrect, with little hope of success, judging from Israel’s latest real estate plans in Jerusalem..
More people will be convinced that the only thing Israel understands is power and force. This kind of achievement undermines the negotiation process, Abdul Sattar Kassem, a political science professor, and Hamas supporter, told the LAT.
It will destroy him (Abbas). It will show the only people who can release real prisoners are Hamas, while he can’t do anything, Hani al-Masri, a Palestinian political analyst predicted two years ago…
Some in Israel condemned the agreement for similar reasons.
The deal is a prize for terrorism. It isn’t a deal. It is capitulation, wrote the columnist Ben-Dror Yemini in the daily Maariv.
As a result, it is safe to say that a negotiated peace settlement is further away than ever. The Palestinians are divided and too feeble to extract Israeli concessions, while the Israelis are under no pressure to come to the negotiating table, and will only do so if they can dictate the terms of any agreement.
This situation may explain why Marwan Barghouti is not on the list of security detainees to be released.
Sometimes referred to as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela, he was jailed for life in 2004 by the Israeli authorities on five counts of murder.
Barghouti, it must be said, has a less inflated view of himself.
I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated-the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else, he once wrote.
He was found guilty of providing financial aid and weaponry to militants who, in a series of attacks, killed four Israelis and a Greek Orthodox monk, and of being the leader of Fattah’s military wing, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
The latter organized suicide bombings during the Second Intifada inside Israel.
Barghouti declined to present any defense, considering his arrest illegal, and the court illegitimate. When the prosecutor branded him a terrorist, he retorted occupation is terrorizing, in Hebrew…
Barghouti remains influential in Palestine because he advocates not only negotiations with Israel (which have, after 17 years, failed to advance the Palestinian national agenda) but also resistance.
Betting on negotiations alone was never our choice. I have always called for a constructive mix of negotiations, resistance, political, diplomatic and popular action, he wrote in 2009.
Barghouti was born in 1958, in Kabar, near Ramallah.
He joined Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement when he was 15.
Three years later, he was jailed for four years by the Israelis for belonging to a terrorist organization (Fatah, also the party of Abbas, was considered as such by the Israelis at the time).
While in jail, he learned Hebrew and completed his high school education. He also claims to have been tortured by his jailers...
He would eventually earn a M.A. in International Relations from Birzeit University.
In 1987, he became one of the leaders of the First Intifada, or uprising, against the Israeli occupation, in the West Bank.
As a result, he was arrested by the Israelis, and deported to Jordan.
After the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994, Barghouti returned to the West Bank, and supported the negotiation process with the Israelis.
He also launched a campaign within Fatah to purge the movement, riddled with corruption, and another against Arafat’s security forces, who he accused of numerous human rights violations.
In 1996, he was elected to the Palestine parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council.
After the Camp David Summit ended in failure in 2000, Barghouti lost faith in the process, and when the Second Intifada erupted in September 2000, he became a vocal leader of the Palestinian resistance.
He also advocated the right of the Palestinians to self-defense in the Occupied Territories.
While I, and the Fatah movement to which I belong, strongly oppose attacks and the targeting of civilians inside Israel, our future neighbors, I reserve the right to protect myself, to resist the Israeli occupation of my country and to fight for my freedom. If Palestinians are expected to negotiate under occupation, then Israel must be expected to negotiate as we resist that occupation, he wrote in the WP in 2002.
I do believe that I am one of the prominent people who support the peace process, he declared in a 2001 interview, however.
One can negotiate peace with Israel while simultaneously resisting its occupation of Palestinian land, according to Barghouti.
When we are talking about resistance, this also includes armed resistance against the Israeli occupation. This is very clear…As I said before, in principle, we oppose any kind of military activity inside Israel, but we do believe any activity inside the Occupied Territories is legal, he added.
If the Israelis tomorrow make a decision for full withdrawal from the territories, we will distribute flowers for the Israelis soldiers as they withdraw from the Occupied Territories…
We are talking about the 1967 borders. We recognized Israel, and we constantly repeat that. The question is not if we recognize Israel, but if Israel recognizes us, he told the interviewer, Jefferson Fletcher.
It must be said however, that during the Second Intifada, some Palestinian radicals had absolutely no qualms about targeting civilians inside Israel, making no distinction between Israel proper and the Occupied Territories.
Barghouti and the moderates were thus unable to contain the resistance movement.
We gave the OK to resistance by the gun against Israeli troops and settlers. We were against operations inside Israel, but it happened out of our control.
We made a big mistake, Ziad Abu Ain, now a deputy minister in the Palestinian government (in the West Bank) told The Guardian in 2009
In 2001, Barghouti narrowly escaped an assassination attempt when his car was struck by an Israeli missile…
Five years later, while in jail, Barghouti co-wrote the Prisoners’ Document (officially known as the National Reconciliation Document), along with the jailed leaders of four other Palestinian factions, including Hamas. It called for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 (thereby implicitly confirming Hamas’s recognition of the state of Israel) and the right of return of refugees.
Hence, Barghouti is a potentially credible partner in any genuine peace process, precisely because his legitimacy and popularity as a representative of the Palestinian people has rested on his two-track approach of negotiation and resistance.
Some in Israel are conscious of this.
Zelev Schiff, a prominent Israeli defense analyst now deceased, once described Barghouti as a charismatic, popular and worthy Palestinian negotiating partner, according to The Guardian.
He may be the only leader able to reunify the Palestinian nationalist movement, currently bitterly divided between Fatah in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza.
A peace agreement signed by Barghouti would thus have a genuine chance of winning the support of the Palestinian people.
Are the Israelis currently interested in striking such a deal?
The prevailing status quo, characterized by the division of the Palestinian nationalist movement into two antagonistic factions, serves the agenda of an Israeli government not keen on reaching an accord that will entail evicting Israeli settlers from occupied Palestinian land.
Arguably, the current division between the Palestinian factions works in Israel’s interests and Barghouti’s commitment to draw Fatah and Hamas back together might represent a serious strategic threat. Many in Israel’s intelligence agencies apparently think so, wrote The Guardian in 2009...
Nothing much has changed these last two years…
As long as the Palestinians are divided, and devoid of an undisputed leader, Israel is under little pressure to resume serious negotiations.
Similarly, Hamas was in no hurry to facilitate the release of a leader that could eventually dominate Palestinian politics and reunify the Palestinian nationalist movement at its expense…
Israel shall release Marwan Barghouti the day it is truly interested in negotiating a genuine and balanced accord with the Palestinians.
Until then…
(the above photograph of Marwan Barghouti was found here)
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