JERUSALEM — Shortly after he was seized by Palestinian militants, Gilad Shalit wrote of his ordeal as an “intolerable and inhumane nightmare.” The letter, one of just three the captive Israel soldier has been allowed to write, appealed to authorities to bring him home from his “closed and solitary prison” in the Gaza Strip.
Wednesday, after more than three years of indirect negotiations for his freedom, Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers reported the first tentative step toward a deal — the exchange of 20 female Palestinian prisoners for a recent videotape as proof of Shalit’s well-being.
The swap, scheduled for Friday, was described in Israel’s announcement as a confidence-building measure in advance of “the decisive stages” of talks aimed at trading the 23-year-old conscript for a far larger number of Palestinian militants.
Shalit’s homecoming would end a painful ordeal for Israel, a country where military service is mandatory for Jews.
For Hamas, Shalit’s release would satisfy a key Israeli condition for ending the economic blockade that has caused shortages of many basic items for Gaza’s 1.5 million people and blocked repairs of the extensive damage caused by Israel’s 22-day military offensive last winter.
