Netanyahu to Russia: Pressure Hamas to Free Shalit

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netanyahu1Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu today asked Russia to exert influence on Hamas to bring about the immediate release of captured Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit.In talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Netanyahu asked Moscow to take advantage of its relations with the Islamist group to push for a prisoner swap deal that would free Shalit after four years in captivity.

The family of the abducted soldier, seized by Palestinian militants in a 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip, arrived in the Haifa area on Tuesday with some 3,000 supporters on the third day of a protest march to the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem.

Shalit’s parents, Noam and Aviva, said last week that they would remain in a protest tent outside Netanyahu’s residence until their son was released and could go home with them.

Also today, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said following his meeting with Lavrov that there was “absolutely no chance of reaching a Palestinian state before the year 2012”.

Lieberman reportedly told Lavrov, who arrived in Israel on an official visit, that Israel opposed Russia’s recent advances toward Hamas. Lavrov responded that it was impossible to ignore the Islamist organization’s popularity amongst Palestinians, particularly in Gaza.

The reported closed-door disagreement quickly became a public one, as the Russian minister openly defended his country’s Middle East policy.

“Russia is doing the right thing by contacting Hamas,” adding that “doing nothing would help no one,” Lavrov said in a joint press conference with Lieberman. “In all our talks with Hamas we have tried to convince them to switch to the political track, and support the Arab peace initiative.”

Lieberman, in turn, dismissed the disagreement, saying that the fact that the two nations were conducting dialogue in the matter was no secret.

{Haaretz/Yair Alpert-Matzav.com Israel}


4 COMMENTS

  1. The Torah forbids the type of ransom demanded for Shalit, it’ll cause more kidnappings. But the Israeli doesn’t care what the Torah says, that’s why they are always in trouble.

  2. Ribono shel olam! We are talking about a mother’s son who was captured by Israel’s enemies.

    Would Yudel have Gilad Shalit rot and die in some stinking cell just because “the Torah forbids the type of ransom demanded for Shalit, it’ll cause more kidnappings”?

    It is precisely this sort of blinkered attitude, as shown by Yudel, that will bring Am Yisrael down.

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