Shalit mediator visits Gaza for talks on prisoner swap

A demonstration calling for the release of Gilad Shalit 21 December

Israelis have hold demonstrations calling for the release of Sgt Shalit

The German mediator trying to secure the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit has visited Gaza, the Islamic movement Hamas says.

The move comes amid speculation that efforts to agree a prisoner swap deal may be making progress.

Israel’s security cabinet met several times on the issue earlier this week, and the mediator is said to have taken Israel’s latest proposal to Hamas.

A Hamas official told Reuters the group would need a few days to study it.

“We have received the Israeli response from the German mediator and it will be studied within a few days,” a Hamas official told the news agency.

The official added that a delegation from Gaza would visit Damascus, where the Palestinian movement’s exiled leadership are based, for further discussions.

Swap debated

Sgt Shalit, 23, was captured in a raid into southern Israel by Palestinian militants from Gaza, in 2006.

Gilad Shalit in the video released by Hamas

Hamas want hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel, including senior militant leaders that Israel holds responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israeli citizens, to be freed in exchange for Sgt Shalit’s release.

Israel’s state prosecutor’s office said last month that the government was considering releasing 450 prisoners that Hamas had asked for, and another 530 to be selected by Israel under the deal under discussion.

Hamas’s list of demanded prisoners is said to include Marwan Bargouthi, a popular leader from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, who is widely seen as a possible successor to Mr Abbas and a figure who might bridge the divisions between Fatah and Hamas, the main Palestinian political faction.

Israel’s seven-person security cabinet held intensive meetings on Sunday and Monday to discuss the issue.

On Tuesday, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israeli leaders faced the obligation to bring Sgt Shalit home, “but not at any price”.

In November members of Hamas went to Cairo to discuss the prisoner swap with mediators there.

President Shimon Peres announced last month that “real progress” had been made, but that details had to be “kept behind the scenes”.