The Shalit prisoner swap is being hailed by both Hamas and Israel, writes Doaa El-Bey On Tuesday, after five years in captivity, Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. The first phase of the deal included the release of 477 prisoners, 27 of them women. The remaining 550 prisoners will be released next month. Samir Ghattas, the director of the Maqdis Centre for Political Studies, views the staggered exchange as a shortcoming. It shows that the terms of the deal remain subject to Israeli criteria, he told Al-Ahram Weekly in a phone interview. More self restraint, and more gestures of good will, will be required from Hamas before implementing the second phase of releases. Besides, the deal secured the release of 27 women prisoner and ignored another nine detained in Israeli prisons. The decision to displace some of the released prisoners and deport others to Turkey, Qatar and Syria is also a retreat from conditions on which Hamas had previously insisted. Displacing or deporting people does not conform to international laws, says Ghattas. The released prisoners face restrictions, determined on a case-by-case basis. Some will not be allowed to leave the country, others will have restrictions placed on their movement. Forty-four of the Palestinians released on Tuesday are to be deported to Turkey, Syria or Qatar. There have been repeated attempts to conclude a deal for the release of Shalit since he was captured in 2006. So why did it take so long? It was largely as a result of Egyptian mediation that a deal was finally struck, says strategic expert Major General Mahmoud Khalaf. Recent changes in Egypt convinced Israel to accept the deal. The bottom-line, he says, is that Egypt pre- and post-revolution are different places. Now the rulers must listen to the public. "Israel found itself forced to listen to the voice of Egyptian public opinion. It felt the impact of public anger when it killed Egyptian soldiers on the Sinai border," he told the Weekly. Ibrahim El-Darawi, head of the Palestinian Studies Centre in Cairo, sees the deal as a landmark prisoner swap that benefits all parties. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he told the Weekly, is facing internal opposition and diminishing popularity. He wanted to offer the public something that could be portrayed as a success. During the last five years Shalit has acquired enormous symbolic importance in Israel. After attempts to release him by force got nowhere, Tel Aviv came to realise that it had no choice but negotiate a deal. There was increasing fear among Shalit's supporters that if a deal were not reached his fate could be the same as that of Israeli Air Force Navigator Ron Arad who crashed his plane in Lebanon 25 years ago and was detained by Hizbullah. He died before his release. Over the years Arad became a symbol of the failure of successive Israeli governments to strike a deal that could bring him back alive. "Had Shalit died in captivity, it would have been a slap in the face of all the governments that ruled since his kidnap," says Darawi. The Arab revolutions also prompted Hamas and Israel to look at the deal in a different way, says Darawi, as did international -- especially European -- impatience with the continuing blockade against Gaza. Ghattas argues that Hamas was also feeling increased pressure to conclude a deal in the face of growing Palestinian Authority popularity following its recent United Nations bid for recognition of an independent state. A large scale prisoner release was seen by many in Hamas as a way of seizing the political initiative back. Hamas is also inching towards a crisis in terms of being headquartered in Damascus. Concluding the Shalit deal will make it easier to negotiate a possible relocation, with Cairo its most likely new home, says Ghattas. The US role in concluding the deal suggests that Washington is pursuing regional goals that include embarrassing Syria, moving Hamas out of Syria, placing more pressure on the Palestinian president and breaking Netanyahu's isolation. The prisoner deal had the support of most Israelis. The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the government's prisoner exchange plans on Monday, rejecting four appeals against the release. The court said that the decision to exchange prisoners rested with the government. The deal was a cause for celebration among Israelis as well as Palestinians. Hamas declared Tuesday a holiday, and three days of celebrations were announced in towns and cities across the West Bank. But the deal did not include prominent prisoners such as Palestinian lawmaker Marwan Barghouti, from Fatah, or Ahmed Saadat, Abdullah El-Barghouti and others from Hamas who are serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis. Hamas had repeatedly refused exchanges in the past because they did not include these names. In a related development, Israeli sources say another prisoner swap, between Egypt and Israel, is in the offing. Reports suggest that a deal to release the dual US-Israeli national Ilan Grapel in return for 81 Egyptians detained in Israeli prisons will soon be concluded. Grapel has been detained since 12 June, accused of spying for Israel and attempting to incite sectarian strife during the 18-day revolt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak early this year. There was no official confirmation of the news from the Egyptian side. Currently, there are 78 Egyptians held in Israeli prisons, in addition to three children below the age of 14 who were accused of infiltrating the borders.
