How many are they; No one knows for sure. Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, in an interview with CNN last night, estimated that there should be between 100 and 150, including 50 soldiers and foreign nationals.. “I think it’s an unprecedented number, among them are Americans. We don’t know the exact number.” A more concrete picture is given by the Arab network Al Jazzera. As early as last Saturday, the first day of the surprise military operation by Hamas fighters in southern Israel, the senior leader of the political bureau of Hamas, Saleh Al Aruri, told Al Jazzera that the “military arm of the organization” captured several Israeli soldiers to force the Israeli authorities to release all Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Qatar brokered prisoner exchange?

“We managed to kill and capture many Israeli soldiers. The fighting continues,” he said, adding that their release was imminent. “Those we have in our hands are enough for us to release all our prisoners. As long as the fighting continues, the number of prisoners will increase,” Al-Arouri added, adding that among the captives were senior Israeli officers without giving further details. data. But how many are the Palestinian prisoners in Israel? According to the latest figures from Addmeer, a prisoner rights NGO, nearly 5,200 Palestinians are in Israeli prisons. Among them 33 women, 170 minors and over 1,222 under “administrative detention”. According to another source, the human rights organization Betselem, there are currently about 4,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, including 183 from the Gaza Strip. There are reports in the media, which are not confirmed by the Israeli side, that the negotiations have been going on since last Saturday night under strict secrecy.

According to the Reuters news agency, citing China’s Xinhua, it appears that Qatar in coordination with the US is playing a central role in efforts to achieve a quick prisoner exchange agreement between the two sides with interlocutors from Hamas officials in Doha and Gaza . A Hamas source told the agency that Qatar’s proposal includes the release of women held by Hamas in exchange for the release of 36 Palestinian women and children held captive in Israel. According to the publication, the negotiations are in a “positive direction” which does not mean that it will be easy as there are signs that both sides have “stood their feet”.

The case of Gilad Shalit

Recent history offers examples of the difficulty of the undertaking. In 2006 Israeli soldier Gilat Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas fighters and taken to an undisclosed location in Gaza. It took 5 years to be released on October 18, 2011 in a two-time prisoner exchange. 477 on October 18 and 550 on December 18, 2011. A total of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier. The irony of fate wanted among the liberated Palestinians to be Yahya Sinwar, “the teacher of martyrs”, the uncompromising strategic leader of Hamas who has made it his life’s purpose to fight against Israel, as Thomas Avenarius states in sketching the portrait of yesterday’s Süddeutsche Zeitung. Sinuar spent a total of 23 years in an Israeli prison. He was sentenced to life in prison for killing two Israeli soldiers, and before that he is said to have killed a Palestinian rival with his own hands. His release then came unexpectedly, Sinwar being the oldest and apparently one of the most important of Hamas. With such a man, any dialogue, even for an exchange of prisoners, has little chance of success.

He and his men would rather die as “martyrs” than submit to the humiliation of the enemy, as Sinuar said five years ago. “We are ready to die. And tens of thousands are ready to do it with us.”

Sinwar appears to have prepared Hamas’s latest and most significant attack together with military chief Mohammed Daif, the mysterious commander of the Qassam Brigades. He has proven to be a seven-souled man. Israeli assassination attempts against Sinwar have so far failed. Characteristically, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung describes, after one of the latest airstrikes, he publicly stated that he would walk for an hour through Gaza City calling on the Israeli army to come after him. To emphasize his coldness, he took many selfies with the residents along the way. Will Israel negotiate a prisoner exchange with him?

As reported by Euronews, a military representative of Hamas threatened from Lebanon that for every bombing of Gaza without warning from Israel, a hostage will be executed. Hamas appears to have already sent videos – some of them gruesome – to the families of the hostages. Another possibility is that Hamas fighters may place the hostages in strategic locations ahead of the Israeli army’s ground operation, which does not appear to be long in coming. However, Ismail Haniya, the head of Hamas’s political office, said the terrorist organization would not hold discussions about “prisoners and captives held by the resistance forces” until the military operation is over.

Source: DW