JERUSALEM — The elaborate machinery of a prisoner-swap deal between two bitter enemies swung into motion Monday as hundreds of Palestinians and one Israeli soldier prepared to return home in one of the most dramatic recent developments in the otherwise deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Israel-Hamas deal, to take place this morning, is going ahead despite criticism and court appeals in Israel against the release of 1,027 Palestinians for a single captured Israeli sergeant, Gilad Schalit, held by militants in Gaza since 2006.
The exchange, negotiated through mediators because Israel and Hamas will not talk directly to each other, involves a delicate series of staged releases, each one triggering the next.
When it is over, Schalit — 19 years old at the time of his capture and 25 now — will be free, ending what for Israel has been a prolonged and painful saga. Israel was forced to acknowledge that it had no way of rescuing Schalit in a military operation, though the soldier was held just miles from its border.
Instead, Israel agreed to a lopsided prisoner exchange that Hamas officials have openly said will encourage them to capture more soldiers, and which will free Palestinians convicted of some of the deadliest attacks against Israeli civilians in recent memory.
Numerically uneven swaps for captured or dead Israeli soldiers held by armed Arab groups have taken place a number of times since the 1980s. The last one, in 2008, saw the release of five militants in return for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by the Lebanese group Hezbollah. In a deal with Hezbollah in 2004, Israel freed about 400 prisoners in return for a former army colonel and the bodies of three soldiers.
When today’s exchange is complete, 477 Palestinians held in Israeli jails will have been released, several of them after decades behind bars. Another 550 are to be freed in two months.
Palestinians slated to be part of the initial part of the exchange already have been moved from their original prisons to other Israeli penal installations in preparation for their release. The very first group, 27 women, were to walk free sometime after dawn today.
After that, Hamas is supposed to move Schalit from Gaza through the Rafah border terminal into Egypt, where he will be met by Israeli medical personnel, according to Israeli defense officials.
Once the soldier is in Egypt, the officials said, the rest of the prisoners will be released under the terms of the exchange agreement.
The swap drew an emotional response from some in Israel because of the number and identities of the prisoners. Among those being released are militants involved in planning and executing suicide bombings in restaurants and on buses during the years of the second Palestinian uprising, which began in 2000.
Palestinians see the prisoners as freedom fighters whose actions were justified in the context of the struggle against Israel.
