Dichter calls captured Hamas man 'bargaining chip' for Shalit - Haaretz

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Tue., September 11, 2007 Elul 28, 5767

Israel Time: 02:01 (EST+7)

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Dichter calls captured Hamas man 'bargaining chip' for Shalit

By Haaretz Service

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, partially lifting an official veil of secrecy over Friday's capture of senior Hamas commander Mahawesh al-Qadi, said Monday that the Hamas Executive Force officer is a bargaining chip in the effort to free abducted IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit.

The IDF and Israeli officials have refused to comment on Palestinian accounts of the kidnapping, in which undercover Israeli soldiers, dressed in the uniform used by the Executive Force, reportedly lured al-Qadi out of his car by having one of their members pose as an old man needing help at the side of a rural road.

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The soldiers, waiting in a Subaru in a grove on the outskirts of Rafah, then allegedly bundled him into the car and drove to the nearby Dahaniya airfield from which witnesses said he was flown by IAF helicopter to an unknown destination.

Al-Qadi is also a senior operative in Hamas' military wing. He is believed to have been closely involved in the June 2006 kidnapping of Shalit during a Hamas-led attack on an IDF post within Israel and adjacent to the Gaza Strip.

Without mentioning al-Qadi by name, Dichter confirmed in an interview with Army Radio that the government viewed him as a bargaining chip in negotiations for Shalit's freedom.

He cited the cases of Sheikh Abd al Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, Lebanese militant commanders abducted by Israel and later freed in an exchange for the bodies of three IDF serviceman and a kidnapped Israeli businessman. Dichter called Obeid and Dirani "very important bargaining chips in bringing our boys home - to my sorrow, the bodies of our boys."

Dichter said that while the intelligence that Israel could gain from al-Qadi was mainly relevant to the period up to the point of his capture, "there are additional elements that are always current.

"Every method, every technique used to gain additional intelligence, is welcome and very important to the effort to bring Gilad Shalit home. Second, the ability to obtain additional 'assets' - with concrete relevance to the release of Gilad Shalit - is an enormous advantage," he said.

According to Dichter, in the end "we will free Gilad Shalit through negotiations, at the end of which terrorists will be released to the Palestinian Authority or to Hamas in Gaza, and we will receive Gilad Shalit in return."

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