Israel pays high price for soldier’s freedom

ISRAELI soldier Gilad Shalit and hundreds of Palestinians crossed Israel’s borders in opposite directions yesterday as a thousand-for-one prisoner exchange brought joy to families, but did little to ease decades of conflict.

Sergeant Shalit, 25, returned home to a national outpouring of emotion in Israel after five years in captivity in the Gaza Strip. The first few hundred of over a thousand Palestinians being freed in stages from Israeli jails were greeted with kisses and flags in Gaza and the West Bank.

“I missed my family very much,” a gaunt Shalit, his breathing laboured at times, said in an interview with Egyptian television, conducted before he was transferred to Israel. “I hope this deal will promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”

But there was no sign from Israel or Hamas, an Islamist group dedicated to its destruction, that the Egyptian-brokered deal could be a starting point for dialogue.

“The people want a new Gilad, the people want a new Gilad,” tens of thousands of people chanted at a rally in Gaza for freed prisoners, urging that their fighters capture more soldiers to help free some of the 5,000 Palestinians still held by Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, welcoming Shalit home, warned the former prisoners they would be “taking their life into their own hands” if they “returned to terror”.

Defending a deal that left a bittersweet aftertaste in Israel, Netanyahu said he felt the pain of the relatives of Israelis killed by some of the Palestinians released, but saving a captured soldier was a Jewish Biblical imperative.

“It is a difficult day,” he said, describing the price Israel paid for Shalit’s release as high.

Shalit was taken to Israel’s Kerem Shalom — Vineyard of Peace — border crossing, where a helicopter flew him to an Israeli air base for a reunion with his parents.

Israel freed 477 Palestinian prisoners, most of them to the Gaza Strip and many serving life terms for attacks that killed Israelis.

Shalit was abducted in June 2006 by militants who tunnelled into Israel from the Gaza Strip and surprised his tank crew, killing two of his comrades. He was taken back to Gaza and has since been held incommunicado.