JERUSALEM — One day after Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit returned home after five years in captivity in the Gaza Strip, a deep sense of dissatisfaction settled over Israel on Wednesday as questioning began on why it took so long for negotiators to win his release.
The emotion of the second-guessing was heightened by Schalit’s obviously fragile physical condition upon his return. He clearly had been kept from sunshine for years. In addition, doctors who are treating him reported that the wounds he suffered when he was captured in 2006 had been “incorrectly treated” while he was a prisoner and that he appeared to have been confined in a manner that prevented him from exercising, adding to his weakness.
Israelis who watched Schalit emerge from his captivity expressed shock at his gaunt and pale form.
“Why did he have to wait this long?” asked Ohad Kerner, one of the activists who had fought for his release.
“From what we are hearing, it seems like maybe he could have come home sooner. It was just that the leaders weren’t ready to make a deal,” she said.
The Schalits, according to those close to them, also are upset over reports that a deal could have been reached sooner, though they have refrained from criticizing the government publicly.
Others wondered why, if Israeli officials were going to agree to release more than 1,000 prisoners, they hadn’t gone ahead and done so years ago as reports surfaced that such a deal had been negotiated before — and rejected.
Many opposed swap
Questions about whether Israel moved aggressively enough in the Schalit case touched several sensitive nerves, including the feelings of a large number of Israelis who opposed the prisoner swap because it meant freedom for hundreds of Palestinians convicted of killing their family members in bombings and other attacks.
They also raised uncomfortable accusations that the Israel Defense Forces hadn’t made a serious effort to rescue Schalit, one of their own taken from a desert military outpost by a small group of Gaza-based Palestinian militants.
On Tuesday, 477 Palestinians were freed, about 300 of whom had been serving long prison terms for violent acts against Israelis. Another 550 are to be released sometime in the next two months.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu felt compelled to accept the deal because of fast-changing political developments in Egypt, which served as the go-between in the deal but whose political complexion is unclear with parliamentary elections set to begin Nov. 28.
“It was now or never,” said one military intelligence officer who was familiar with details of the Schalit negotiations and who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to discuss the arrangements in public.
“If Netanyahu didn’t take the current offer, he risked having it on his conscience that he missed the last opportunity to return Schalit,” the officer said. “Who knows what Egypt will look like after the elections?”
Schalit’s release also owes much to a public-relations campaign that turned the Israeli soldier into an icon, portraying him as the nation’s son with bumper stickers, billboards and TV ads.
PR firms and communications experts working for Schalit’s parents drove a sophisticated campaign that also enlisted celebrities, musicians and an army of thousands of volunteers. It was aimed at pressuring the Israeli leaders to negotiate the release of Schalit, captured in a daring cross-border raid by Gaza militants.
When he was captured, Schalit was an unknown 19-year-old serving in a tank unit on the Gaza border. The PR campaign made his face one of the most recognizable in the country.
Organizers say the PR efforts succeeded by fashioning him into the boy next door — a soldier who, in a country with mandatory military service, could be anyone’s child.
“What we did was to strategically identify the main message that was needed to guide the campaign. That message was that Gilad is everyone’s son,” said Benny Cohen, a partner in Rimon Cohen Sheinkman PR, the Tel Aviv-based public-relations firm approached by Schalit’s parents in 2007.
Images of Schalit have hung on billboards, flags and bumper stickers across the country and even, for a time, in New York’s Times Square. His family erected a protest tent outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem, posting a tally of the days the soldier had been held. The tent became a pilgrimage site for activists and onlookers from across the country.
A national ethos of solidarity in Israel, an “all for one and one for all” mentality necessary in a country with compulsory military service for Jewish citizens, helped the campaign encourage activism on such a large scale.
Cohen, the PR man, said one reason the Schalit campaign drew higher levels of engagement than those for other captive soldiers was the changed media age — online social networks, for example, played a central role in helping to organize and spread messages.
It was the tireless efforts of the campaign and the Schalit family — especially his parents, Noam and Aviva — that helped force Netanyahu’s hand, wrote columnist Nehemia Shtrasler in the daily Haaretz this week.
“Without the tent that gave (Netanyahu) no rest, without the elegant harassment of Noam and Aviva Schalit, who spent the holidays on the sidewalk near his home, and without the demonstrations of tens of thousands of Israelis, Gilad Schalit would still be in a Gaza basement,” he wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
