Word: shalit
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...leading Hamas politician in Gaza told TIME that his movement would accept a cease-fire if Israel stopped its air strikes and opened the border crossings into Gaza. He also pressed Israel to agree to release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the freedom of Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped in June 2006. Israel has, until now, refused to discuss a truce with Hamas, which it (together with the U.S. and European Union) considers a terrorist organization. And, facing international sanctions designed to oust it from power, Hamas has shown no inclination to halt rockets being fired into southern...
...appointed by the Israeli government to investigate the many failures that occurred in Israel's 2006 military campaign in Lebanon. Hoping to distract Israelis from the report's anticipated criticism of his performance, Olmert and his government had been working furiously, through Egyptian channels, to free Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit who has been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since the spring...
...Hamas commander told TIME that the three-step deal - in which 300 Hamas prisoners would be freed, then Shalit followed by thousands more Hamas inmates - was "80% finished". But talks fell apart after Israelis killed 17 Palestinian militants in Gaza last week, one of them the son of a senior Hamas hard-liner. Now, Olmert has no chance of springing the Israeli captive and deflecting attention away from the possibly damning Winograd report...
...Israelis toughened their negotiating stance believing that with international sanctions squeezing Gaza, Hamas might be desperate to strike a deal. And Hamas has certainly exhibited a new willingness to bargain: exactly a year after Shalit's kidnapping, his captors released an audio tape of the soldier pleading for Olmert to do more to release...
Still, Hamas officials urge Israel to speak directly with them, since they were freely elected in the January 2006 Palestinian elections, and they now exercise control over Shalit's kidnappers in Gaza. "We are willing to talk directly to the Israelis," says one Hamas official. "So why are the Israelis play the ostrich with us? They're willing to talk with our men in jail but not to us directly...