The armed branch of Hamas blamed Israel yesterday for the collapse of prisoner swap talks and warned it could hike its demands in return for freeing a soldier captured almost three years ago.
“We put the entire responsibility for blocking a deal on the enemy government,” Ezzedine Al-Qassam said in a statement. “If we have to change our position, it will be to increase our demands and not the other way around.”
The statement came a day after outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would not accept terms Hamas set for a prisoner swap, saying the Islamists had hardened their stance and made extreme demands in the last days of the Egyptian-brokered negotiations.
PHOTO: EPA
“We have been generous in our conditions and we will not free other prisoners than those we agreed to release,” Olmert said in a statement broadcast live on Israeli TV and radio stations on Tuesday.
“In the name of the state of Israel and its government, I declare that there are red lines that we will not cross ... We will not cave in to the demands of a terrorist group,” he said.
Olmert said efforts would continue, but his tone indicated that there was no chance for a deal while he is in office. Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is putting together the next government, which is expected to be a hard-line team less sympathetic to Hamas demands.
Two main disputes apparently sank the deal — the number of Palestinians Israel would free in return for its soldier Gilad Shalit, seized by Gaza militants in June 2006, and how many of them would be allowed to return to their homes in the occupied West Bank.
Israel said it agreed to release 320 of 450 Palestinians Hamas wants freed including some responsible for attacks that killed Israelis, something that Israel normally refuses to do.
Egypt has been brokering efforts to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas, since the two sides will not talk directly.
After Olmert spoke, Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said Hamas had never changed its demands and was not concerned about the incoming Israeli government.
“It is going to be no different, and no change and no compromise on our demands,” he said.
A message on a Hamas Web site Tuesday threatened abduction of more Israeli soldiers “to release our prisoners.”
A disappointed Noam Schalit, father of the soldier, said after a briefing from Olmert, that he hoped the contacts would provide “a basis for the next government to continue the efforts.”
Israel TV broadcast Olmert’s statement on a split screen with Olmert on one side and the soldier’s parents watching on the other from their protest tent outside Olmert’s residence.
Netanyahu was moving ahead with efforts to form a broad-based coalition, a deputy with his right-wing Likud party said yesterday.
“There are differences between [centrist party] Kadima and Likud, but we want to form as large a government as possible and contacts to that end continue,” Gilad Erdan told public radio.
Kadima leader and outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has repeatedly rejected Netanyahu’s offers to join his coalition.
Netanyahu was hoping to form a Cabinet by the end of this week to avoid seeking a two-week extension to cobble together a union.
That goal however looks increasingly unlikely as he has so far signed just one coalition agreement, with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party.
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