Hamas holding talks over release of Israeli soldier

Khaled Meshaal, the leader of Hamas, made a dramatic visit to Cairo yesterday amid a new diplomatic effort to secure the release of an Israeli soldier captured near Gaza more than three years ago.

Meshaal was to meet Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief, who has been the most important mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group in the case of Gilad Shalit.

The Israeli soldier, now 23, is believed to be still alive, held somewhere in Gaza by Hamas.

Since mid-July, officers from Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, have been leading a new attempt to broker his release. German officials have made 11 visits to Gaza in the past month, a Hamas spokesman said.

A new offer of a prisoner exchange that would see the release of hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails is reportedly on the table.

The manoeuvring comes before a critical moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations, with US President Barack Obama hoping to relaunch the Middle East peace process with a deal to freeze Israeli settlement construction on the West Bank.

Other senior Hamas figures from Gaza have been in Cairo in recent days, among them Ahmad Jabari, head of the group's armed wing. The last time he went to Cairo was in the northern spring, when a previous deal to free Shalit was under intense discussion.

However, despite the signs of apparent progress, there have been suggestions from within the Israeli Cabinet that a deal is still a long way off. Defence Minister Ehud Barak, in particular, has said he refuses to be pressured into a deal.

Ten days ago Barak said that, although Israel was committed to bringing Shalit home, it would not accept a deal "at any cost".

Barak talked about the Shalit case to a group of Israeli schoolchildren in the Negev, not far from Gaza, telling them "not to whine and not to be spineless ... We've overcome some very difficult things, and we will face even harder things". He again said he wanted Shalit freed but "not at any cost, and not under any circumstances".

Shalit's father, Noam, later gave a curt response. His family, he said, "expects less talk, less statements and more actions".

Then last Friday Yuval Steinitz, the Finance Minister and a hawk within the Likud Party, criticised the campaign for the soldier's release, saying it damaged Shalit's hopes.

"Such campaigns do more harm than good," he told an Israeli television channel. "It looks very strange when people go to the streets and demonstrate in front of the home of the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] chief of staff over this issue."

He was speaking only days after Shalit's family marked his 23rd birthday with a large rally at their home in Mitzpe Hila, in northern Israel. The soldier's mother, Aviva, talked to the crowd about the increasingly dire conditions in Gaza, and said families of Palestinian prisoners were also waiting for their return.

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