Eleven thousand and one
More than virtually any other issue, the fate of soldier Gilad Shalit has proven able to arouse attention and sympathy in the Israeli society.
Captured by a Hamas unit during a cross-border raid in June 2006 and held at some hidden Gaza location since then, Shalit's face has become well-known from the countless leaflets, ads, placards and banners disseminated by the Free Gilad Campaign, and now also from the video recording brought out of Gaza after considerable effort of the German mediator.
Shalit's parents, Noam and Aviva, gained an enormous moral force in the Israeli society. Always restrained and thoughtful, Noam Shalit is very effective in arousing response from a variety of audiences.
In ceaseless demonstrations, protests and vigils, thousands of people -- especially young -- keep calling upon the government to bring the captive soldier home. At least officially, it is "an entirely non-partisan, non-political campaign." School principals let their pupils take time off from studies in order to demonstrate for Shalit. And the demonstrations and rallies are saturated with patriotic and Zionist slogans, placards painted with national Blue-and-White and references to the IDF's "sacred tradition, never to leave behind a soldier in trouble."
There is also an international campaign -- especially in France, whose citizenship Shalit holds concurrently with the Israeli one. President Sarkozy took up the issue personally. As Palestinians and their sympathizers bitterly noted, none of the 11,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention camps has become so widely known as the one single Israeli held by Palestinians. Yet it is also true that the imprisonment of Shalit holds the best -- in many cases, the only -- chance of freedom for these prisoners.
In the past, Israeli governments refused to negotiate and tried to release captured Israelis by military action. The traumatic case of Nachshon Waxman, a soldier captured by Palestinians in 1994 and killed when an elite commando unit tried to extract him, in practice ruled out this option.
This left the then Olmert government with either putting pressure on Hamas -- or releasing the prisoners demanded in exchange, or a bit of both. To start with, an increasingly harsh siege was imposed on the Gaza Strip, both before and after the outright war of January 2009, and virtually all Hamas parliamentarians and other political leaders on the West Bank were placed in detention and often subjected to a humiliating treatment. All of which completely failed to secure Shalit's release (or to undermine the elected Hamas government, which was the wider undeclared aim).
Through an Egyptian channel negotiations, were initiated on a prisoner exchange. It was not too difficult to agree on the number -- a thousand Palestinian prisoners (of the 11,000 held by Israel) to be released in two stages in return for Shalit. However, negotiations snagged over their identity -- with the Israeli side refusing to release prisoners considered to have "blood on their hands." Of course, quite some Israelis have at least as much "blood on their hands." But the power relations are such that they walk free.
Over this point, the negotiations snagged and failed again and again. Especially, it happened like that on the last days of Olmert, when a particularly intensive public campaign was launched and there was wide expectation of an impending exchange.
From confrontation to cooperation
The Shalit Campaign so far avoided explicitly asking the government "to pay the price Hamas demands." However, at its rallies speakers often call upon the government "to do everything needed in order to bring him home, with no further delay." There are also repeated references to the traumatic case of Ron Arad -- whose plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 -- for whose sake the government at the time refused to release "terrorists with blood on the hands" and who later disappeared and is widely presumed to be dead.
"Don't let Gilad become a second Ron Arad" is widely interpreted as calling upon the government to accede to the Hamas demands -- which caused right-wingers to denounce the Shalit Campaign as "disguised leftists and Hamas dupes."
Thereupon, the campaign organizers changed tack, suddenly making strident calls for intensifying and tightening the siege on Gaza until Shalit is released, its activists coming to the border crossings and attempting to physically block the entry of the trickle of vital supplies still allowed in.
There were also calls to worsen the conditions of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, especially to deny them family visits "until Shalit is allowed to get visitors." Campaign activists, defining themselves as "The Army of Gilad's Friends" arrived at prison gates and on several occasions intimidated Palestinian family members who had made it through the army checkpoints.
Yet on one of these prison gate confrontations, something unexpected happened. A bitter and emotionally charged confrontation developed into a genuine dialogue and a measure of mutual understanding. This, led a few weeks later, to two simultaneous demonstrations being held on both sides of the Gaza border, with Israelis and Palestinians alike calling for a speedy agreement on prisoner release. This was followed by a package for Gilad Shalit being passed to the Palestinian side, in exchange for Koran books intended for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli organizer Yoel Marshak was shown on TV, speaking on his mobile phone and cordially coordinating the operation with the Palestinian side. "It is a Hamas man with whom I had contact in the past weeks. I think he wants the same what we want -- a prisoner exchange right now, and peace in the end" he told.
