Israel: There will be no Shalit deal unless Hamas is flexible

Israel intends to demand that Hamas alter significantly the list of Palestinian prisoners it wants released for freeing abducted soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel will state its case in a message to be passed on by Egyptian mediators.

Shalit has been held captive in the Gaza Strip since June 2006.

The Israeli demands are expected to be presented to Egypt's chief of intelligence, Omar Suleiman, by Ofer Dekel, the prime minister's negotiator for the release of Israeli soldiers held in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Dekel will stress that "flexibility in the Hamas demands is a condition for a [swap] deal from Israel's point of view."

Dekel's visit to Egypt this week will signal the resumption of negotiations for a deal over Shalit, following many months in which the matter had been on hold.

The Israeli negotiator will be briefed by Suleiman on Hamas' most recent positions on the Shalit question, and on the ways Cairo expects to resume contacts between the two sides.

At this point there seems to be no significant change in the positions of Israel and Hamas. The radical Islamic group is demanding the release of at least 450 prisoners, most believed to be responsible for the murder of Israelis.

Israel has agreed to release only 70 of those on the list, and at this stage refuses to release the rest.

According to Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic-language daily, the negotiations for the release of Shalit are close to conclusion.

But the newspaper claims that a dispute still exists between the two sides over the identity of 30 prisoners that Hamas wants released.

"Israel has had proposals and there have been other proposals, but now it is Hamas' turn to show flexibility if it wants a deal," a senior political source in Jerusalem said on Saturday. "There is no other option."

Several months ago, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided that Israel will not agree to the terms posed by Hamas because it required the release of people involved in the murder of Israelis. Among these were Abbas al-Sayed, the mastermind behind the Park Hotel suicide bombing in March 2002.

The senior political source said on Saturday that Olmert's view has remained unchanged and that "unless the Hamas position changes, there will be no deal and it will not be possible to achieve progress."

Meanwhile, the Shalit family will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday. Sarkozy, who is on an official visit to Israel, hopes to be updated on the case because Shalit is also a French citizen.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak discussed the Shalit case in Paris on Wednesday with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who said that "France hopes the cease-fire in Gaza will bring a breakthrough in the release of Gilad Shalit.