Senior Hamas political leader and its representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan has affirmed Thursday that Israeli premier Ehud Olmert knows the way for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit's freedom, describing Olmert's call for prisoners swap agreement based on the Israeli vision as part of the Israeli pressures on Hamas.
"Olmert isn't serious in his call for a swap agreement because he knows very well the way to free Shalit and that is to meet Hamas's conditions for the swapping, and those conditions come out of a Palestinian national position and not from Hamas alone", he underlined.
He added that Olmert considers the freeing of Shalit as historic opportunity to beautify his tarnished image after he was defeated twice, the first in Lebanon in 2006, and the second in 2009 in the Gaza Strip; yet, if he wants to score an achievement, then he should simply expedite the swapping of prisoners according to the demands of the Palestinian resistance [which holds Shalit].
Talking on the ongoing inter-Palestinian dialogue in Cairo, Hamdan pointed out that it was still early to expect outright results from the meetings that just started today, stressing that what was indeed needed was to form dialogue committees with clear-cut mechanisms and subjects to tackle within specified time.
But he expressed optimism that the dialogue would go smooth and positive to bury the hatchet and resolve issues of disputes between Hamas and Fatah, the two main factions in the Palestinian arena.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation government dispatched Ofer Dekel to Cairo with new proposal regarding the prisoners swap process with Hamas, which, according to Hebrew sources, he would discuss with Egypt's chief of intelligence Omar Suleiman.
The Hebrew Maariv newspaper revealed that Dekel was carrying a list of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners selected by the Israeli occupation government, including those "with Israeli blood on their hand".
According to the paper, the list will be presented for Hamas to pick 450 names of them who will be swapped with Shalit.
Hamas had reiterated more than once that the Israelis should free the prisoners placed on the list that the Movement had prepared and submitted to them.
In an interview with channel 2 of the Israeli TV, Olmert alleged that he was worried that his successor in government might not be able to reach an agreement in this regard and bring Shalit "home".
"Although I believe that the prime minister who will come after me would do everything to free Shalit, I am still worried that he would face some difficulties in this path due to the anticipated set-up of his cabinet" Olmert elaborated.
No comments:
Post a Comment