Israel, Palestinians readying for Friday swap deal (2nd Roundup)

Oct 1, 2009, 20:06 GMT

Ramallah/Tel Aviv - Israel and the families of 20 female Palestinian prisoners were readying themselves for a swap deal Friday in which Israel would free the prisoners in exchange for a sign-of- life video of an Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip for over three years.

The deal, which could mark the first step towards freeing Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, was announced Wednesday.

The prisoners will be transferred from a prison in central Israel to a checkpoint in the West Bank, at the same time as Israel receives the one-minute video cassette, reportedly filmed recently, showing the captive soldier.

The cassette will be handed over to Shalit's family after Israeli officials have studied it.

Shalit was snatched during a cross-border raid launched from the Gaza Strip on June 25, 2006. Hamas is demanding that Israel free 1,000 prisoners in exchange, but largely Egyptian-mediated negotiations for his release have until now been unsuccessful.

A last-ditch attempt by the Israeli Almagor Terror Victims Association to block the deal failed Thursday evening, after the Supreme Court rejected their petition against the exchange.

Israel on Thursday night added another name to the list of prisoners slated for release, after it transpired that one of the detainees on the list was set free Wednesday night.

Braah Mulki, 15, was freed as her prison term was about to end in November. She returned to her family in the refugee camp of Jilasoun, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah.

Mulki had been serving an 11-month prison sentence for trying to stab an Israeli soldier in December 2008 at the Qalandia military checkpoint between northern Jerusalem and Ramallah.

Only one of the 20 female prisoners is from Gaza, the remainder are from the West Bank.

Although the impending release of the video tape would be a breakthrough in the protracted efforts to free Shalit, Israeli officials warned that receiving information on his condition did not mean that his freedom was imminent.

Since he was taken, Shalit has been held virtually incommunicado somewhere in the Gaza Strip. About a year after he was seized, his captors released an audio tape, in which he pleaded with Israel to secure his release. His captors have also transferred three letters from him to his family.

But apart from that there have been no signs of life. He has been denied visits from the Red Cross.

Abu Obeida, a spokesman for Hamas' armed wing, announced the deal in Gaza Wednesday, telling reporters that four of the prisoners will be from Hamas, five from the Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas, three from Islamic Jihad, one from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and seven without affiliation to any group.

Most of the prisoners to be set free are due for release in 2010 or 2011. Four, including Mulki, were slated to be freed this year, and three were being held until 'the end of proceedings.'

Their crimes range from attempted homicide to attacking soldiers to possessing weapons.

Some 47 female Palestinian prisoners are currently being held in Israel, including three minors, according to the Israeli B'tselem human rights organization. The upcoming exchange means that nearly half will be freed, and Hamas was quick to portray the deal as a significant achievement.

The exchange was brokered by a German mediator, who began working on the Shalit case early this summer and whose identity has been kept strictly secret.