FAMILIES OF victims of Palestinian attacks have petitioned the Israeli high court against next Tuesday’s expected prisoner swap.
Israel intends to release 1,027 detainees in return for Sgt Gilad Shalit, the soldier who has been in Hamas captivity in Gaza for more than five years.
The families described the decision by the Israeli cabinet to authorise the swap as “unreasonable and disproportionate” due to the “dramatic number of terrorists with blood on their hands being released, including arch-murderers sentenced to multiple life sentences for the murder of dozens of people”.
The petition said the deal struck with Hamas was unprecedented, both in the number and calibre of militants being released, and in the future threat it posed to Israeli soldiers and civilians.
The high court will convene early next week to rule on petitions against the deal, after Israel releases all the names of the detainees to be freed. The judicial branch has never in the past overruled government decisions to release Palestinian militants.
Despite the fact that the deal is likely to boost the standing of Hamas and could encourage militants to seize more Israeli soldiers, the majority of the Israeli public backs the prisoner swap.
Ministers from the religious Shas party urged Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to free Jewish prisoners convicted of attacking Arabs to “balance” the deal with Hamas.
Yesterday a 27-year-old Israeli, whose parents and three of his siblings were killed in a Palestinian bombing, vandalised the Tel Aviv memorial to assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. One of the Palestinians set to be released was involved in the 2001 bombing at a Jerusalem restaurant in which the man lost his relatives.
There was also opposition on the Palestinian side to the agreement. Criticism, including from within Hamas, centred on the fact that Hamas negotiators agreed to the Israeli demand that several senior militants not be included in the list of prisoners to be released.
These included Marwan Barghouti, the main Fatah figure arrested during the second intifada uprising, and Ahmad Sa’adat, the former leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was convicted of being behind the assassination of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi.
There was also criticism over the fact that Hamas agreed that 40 of the West Bank detainees would be exiled abroad and 163 would be forced to move to Gaza.