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Noam Shalit, father of captured soldier Gilad Shalit.
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| By Associated Press January 11, 2007 |
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The father of a captured Israeli soldier confronted one of his son's captors in a dramatic joint radio appearance -- pleading with the Hamas-linked terrorists to release his boy and take him instead.
The militant rejected the plea from Noam Shalit, saying during the Wednesday interview that the soldier will be freed only when Israel releases large numbers of Palestinian prisoners.
Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 20, was captured in a June 25 raid by militants who tunneled under the Gaza-Israel border and attacked an Israeli army post, killing two soldiers and taking Shalit with them.
Negotiations through Egyptian mediators have failed to win his freedom, with the two sides blaming each other for the breakdown.
Frustrated by the six month stalemate, Shalit, 52, said that if his son's captors sought assurances, he was willing to offer himself up as collateral until a final deal could be secured.
"I, myself, am prepared to be guarantor for this and, if needed, I am prepared to travel to the Gaza Strip, and to stay with Hamas' security forces until all of their demands are answered," he said.
After the radio appearance, Shalit told The Associated Press: "If I could switch places with him, I would gladly do so."
Shalit faced off against Abu Mujahid, the representative of the kidnappers, on "Radio All For Peace," an independent station run by both Jews and Arabs in Israel.
Abu Mujahid told Shalit that he'd be welcome in Gaza only as an official negotiator. He assured Shalit that his son was well and was not being tortured.
Shalit spoke in Hebrew and Abu Mujahid in Arabic. Their words were translated to each other by the moderator.
The broadcast exchange came a day after Abu Mujahid gave the first official account on Shalit's condition. The militant said the soldier was in good health and is being treated "according to Islamic standards."
Late Wednesday, Rafiq Husseini, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said talks among the factions would resume soon and continue for two weeks, with a goal of establishing a unity government. If the talks fail, he said, Abbas would proceed with his plan of calling an election.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas called on the Palestinians to prevent internal violence from exploding into a civil war.
"We stress the necessity of sparing the Palestinian people any internal confrontations and to avoid using weapons as a medium for dialogue and to focus on dialogue only to solve our differences," he said before a Cabinet meeting.
Haniyeh's Islamic Hamas group, which controls the Cabinet and parliament, and Abbas' more moderate Fatah have been engaged in bloody street battles that have killed 35 Palestinians over the past month.
Haniyeh said the fighting "will please enemies of the Palestinians, who want to see civil war."
Gaza Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan kept up his verbal assault on Hamas in an interview published Wednesday in the Israeli Haaretz daily.
"They lost the Palestinian street, which sees what they have become," Dahlan said, "a bunch of murderers and thieves who execute Palestinians only because they are Fatah members." He admitted Fatah made mistakes that led to its defeat by Hamas in elections a year ago, "but we won't repeat them."
The vote ending decades of Fatah rule was seen as a public protest against its corruption and nepotism more than an endorsement of Hamas' extremist ideology.
Breakdown of the Fatah-Hamas unity talks spurred the violence. |
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