THE ISRAELI supreme court will this afternoon hear petitions against tomorrow’s prisoner swap, in which Israel will release 1,027 Palestinian detainees in return for Gilad Shalit, the sergeant who has been held in captivity in Gaza by Hamas for more than five years.
Preparations for the swap began yesterday after President Shimon Peres pardoned the first batch of 477 inmates due to be released tomorrow, including 280 militants who were sentenced to life terms and 27 women inmates. The prisoners were bused to two prisons close to Gaza and the West Bank ahead of tomorrow’s release.
If all goes according to plan, Gilad Shalit will be transferred from Egypt to Gaza once the Palestinian inmates have been freed. He will then cross overland into Israel and be flown by helicopter to an airforce base, where he will be met by his family and formally welcomed by prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, defence minister Ehud Barak and the head of the Israeli defence forces, Lieut Gen Benny Gantz. After a medical examination the reunited family will be flown to their Galilee home.
A number of Israelis and organisations representing victims of terrorist attacks have petitioned the supreme court against the deal, even though the judicial branch has never overturned government decisions to free Palestinian militants in return for captured Israeli servicemen.
Gilad’s father, Noam, said the Shalit family would join the state defence team to argue against the petitions. “Any delay can be fateful. If the deal does not go ahead now, it may never go ahead,” he said.
It was revealed yesterday that included in the list of prisoners to be freed is Abed Alaziz Salaha, who participated in the lynching of two Israeli reservists in the centre of the West Bank city of Ramallah in October 2000. The picture of Salaha holding up his bloodied hands from a window in the building where the soldiers were killed became one of the iconic images of the second Palestinian intifada uprising.
Michael Norzich, brother of Vadim, one of the slain soldiers, spoke out yesterday against the prisoner swap.
“The government lied to all the bereaved families. They promised the bereaved parents that the terrorists would never get out. Ehud Barak made a personal promise to me that this terrorist would never see the light of day. I knew that day that he had lied to me,” he said.