Palestinians: Shalit negotiations hang on exile for Barghouti

Nov 24, 2009, 13:24 GMT

Cairo/Damascus/Gaza City - - Negotiations between Israeli officials and Hamas over a possible deal to release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit now hinge on whether two imprisoned Palestinian leaders would be freed but allowed to remain in the occupied territories, Palestinian politicians said Tuesday.

Representatives of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, arrived in Cairo on Monday for indirect negotiations on a prisoner-swap deal that could see Shalit, captured by Hamas in 2006, freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

'We have a hotline with our brothers, the Hamas delegation, who are negotiating in Cairo, and we are following their progress step by step,' Abu Ahmed Fouad, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), told the German Press Agency dpa from Damascus, where he is exiled.

'We and all Palestinian factions insist that resistance leaders Ahmed Saadat and Marwan Barghouti be released, without being exiled outside the Palestinian territories, as the Israelis have stipulated,' Fouad said.

A Hamas official who is part of the negotiating team, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Hamas rejects exile for PFLP leader Saadat and Barghouti, a leading member of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction.

'There is a serious chance Barghouti will be released,' Danny Danon, deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament and a leading member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, told the New York Times in an interview published Tuesday.

But in an interview with the BBC's Arabic service, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said Barghouti would not be part of any deal.

'There still isn't any conclusion, any deal, any decision,' Netanyahu told reporters while visiting Israel's national police headquarters in Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Iyad al-Saraj, the secretary general of the 'Reconciliation Committee,' which includes politicians from various Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, told reporters that the group would reconvene in Cairo in the coming days, though no specific date had yet been set.

Fatah last month signed a 25-page Egyptian proposal to end the division, but Hamas said it wanted more time to seek clarifications on the timing and conduct of the Palestinian elections.