Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and hundreds of Palestinians crossed Israel’s borders in opposite directions yesterday as a thousand-forone prisoner exchange brought joy to families, but did little to ease decades of conflict.
Shalit, 25, returned home to a national outpouring of emotion in Israel after five years in captivity in the Gaza Strip. The first few hundred of more than 1,000 Palestinians being freed in stages from Israeli jails were greeted with kisses and flags in Gaza and the West Bank.
“I missed my family very much,” a gaunt Shalit, his breathing labored at times, said in an interview with Egyptian television, conducted before he was transferred to Israel. “I hope this deal will promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
Photo: AFP
However, on the eve of the prisoner exchange, it emerged that efforts to revive peace talks that collapsed 13 months ago had failed to bring both sides together for meetings scheduled for Wednesday in Jerusalem. Envoys from the Quartet of mediators — the US, the EU, Russia and the UN — will instead hold separate sessions with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
Shalit was taken across the frontier from the Gaza Strip into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and driven to Israel’s Kerem Shalom border crossing, from where a helicopter flew him to an Israeli air base for a reunion with his parents.
Simultaneously, Israel freed 477 Palestinian prisoners, most of them to the Gaza Strip and many serving life terms for attacks that killed Israelis. Hamas leaders greeted former prisoners piling off buses bearing Red Cross insignia.
Photo: AFP, Israeli Prime Minister’s Office
A military statement said Shalit was in good health and the army released photographs of him, back in uniform and spectacles, saluting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, witnesses said Shalit had felt nauseous and weak and needed oxygen.
“I brought your boy home,” Netanyahu said he told Shalit’s parents, as he waited with them at the Tel Nof airbase near Tel Aviv for the soldier’s helicopter to land.
“But it’s still a difficult day and the price was heavy,” Netanyahu said in a speech at the base, warning released prisoners “who return to terror” that they are “taking their life in their hands.”
Meanwhile, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, embraced freed prisoners as they piled out of buses in Rafah, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a speech of welcome in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
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