Families Held Captive

Sunday, Jul. 09, 2006 By CHRISTOPHER ALLBRITTON | HILA AND PHIL ZABRISKIE | GAZA CITY
WAITING GAME: Baroud longs to see her son, imprisoned in Israel
SCOUT TUFANKJIAN / POLARIS for TIME
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Ghalia Baroud's every emotion is on display when she speaks of her son, Ibrahim. Sitting in her tidy home in Gaza's Jabaliya refugee camp, surrounded by pictures of Ibrahim — jailed since 1986, at the age of 21, for taking part in attacks on Israeli troops — she is by turns furious and woeful. She doesn't deny her son's actions; what almost all Israelis see as terrorism, she sees as justified resistance. But when asked about the parents of Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held [an error occurred while processing this directive] captive by Palestinian militants since June 25, she is instantly empathetic. "We know Israelis love their children just as we do," she says softly.

The Shalit family's love for Gilad is indeed palpable in the northern Israeli town of Hila, where his parents, Noam and Aviva, live and where a banner hangs reading gilad: we are waiting for you at home. Noam, a compact man with close-cropped white hair and blue eyes, has no sympathy for the actions of the militants of Hamas or the Popular Resistance Committee, but he is keenly aware that the current military operation in Gaza — launched with the stated intent of freeing his son, but since greatly expanded to counter Palestinian rocket fire into Israel, and to make a political point — is imposing extraordinary hardships on noncombatants there. "Thousands of ordinary Palestinians are suffering for this issue," he said last week.

It's an all too familiar dynamic. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians sweeps people up whether they wish it or not. Noam Shalit and Ghalia Baroud both want an agreement that would bring their children home. Yet, two weeks after Gilad was taken, there is no sign of such an agreement, the Israeli military operation into Gaza has grown, and the fighting has dramatically intensified. In the past, Israel has been forced to defuse such hostage conflicts by releasing prisoners — including ranking members of Hamas and other militant organizations — in order to win release of their soldiers or, in some cases, soldiers' bodies. Shalit's captors are demanding it does so now.

Thus far, to no avail. Negotiations through Egyptian mediators are ongoing, says Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but many obstacles remain. While Baroud, like many parents of Palestinian prisoners, wants Gilad's captors to treat him well, none would advocate that he be freed without getting something in return. For years, Palestinians have tried to call attention to the 9,000-plus Palestinians in Israeli jails, many of them noncombatants convicted in quick trials in military tribunals that Raji Sourani, the director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, calls "kangaroo courts."

Why does the Israeli government appear so inflexible about releasing prisoners at this time? Abbas and Israeli government sources say that at a private meeting in June, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised to release some prisoners as a goodwill gesture. But that was before Shalit was taken. The Israelis worry that capitulation now would encourage further abductions. And they refuse to have terms dictated to them.

Though the captors initially demanded the release of more than 1,000 prisoners, both Abbas and Hamas said last week that the militants would let Shalit go if Israel freed female prisoners, those under 18 and some who have served long sentences — a much smaller group. By the weekend, Israeli government ministers were sending mixed messages: Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said Israel might be willing to release some prisoners, while Interior Minister Ronnie Bar-On insisted it absolutely would not.

Noam Shalit believes that releasing prisoners could be the best way to bring his son home. "Hopefully [Olmert] will release them for Gilad," he says. But with fighting continuing, it's hard to stay optimistic. "I don't think that Gilad will be released without a price," says Shalit. "That's not the way it works in the Middle East."

In this regard, both the Shalits and the Palestinian families desperate to bring their prisoners home have a shared experience of pain. But whatever fragile empathy exists may not survive in any family that doesn't get its son back.