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'Trade Barghuti for Shalit'
25/09/2007 14:02 - (SA)
Jerusalem - An Israeli minister said on Tuesday the Jewish state should exchange jailed Palestinian intifada leader Marwan Barghuti for an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants more than a year ago.
"Marwan Barghuti has a good chance of becoming the next Palestinian leader," Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, infrastructure minister and member of Israel's powerful security cabinet, told army radio.
"His release could allow the political negotiations to advance and bring about the liberation of Gilad Shalit," the Israeli serviceman seized in a deadly cross-border raid by Palestinian militants on June 25 2006.
"All those who are thinking of Israel's security realise that there is no alternative to liberating Marwan Barghuti, as he is the strongman on the Palestinian side," he said.
Barghuti is the West Bank leader of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party and is widely regarded as the inspiration behind the intifada that erupted in September 2000.
He was arrested in 2002 and convicted in 2004 of five counts of murder and one of attempted murder resulting from three suicide attacks and an aborted attack. He is currently serving five life sentences.
Barghuti's incarceration has not diminished his appeal on the Palestinian street - in January 2006 he was re-elected to parliament and is widely regarded as a possible successor to Abbas.
Ben Eliezer said Barghuti's conviction should not prevent Israel from holding talks with the charismatic leader.
"For us he is an assassin, but (Palestinian legendary leader) Yasser Arafat was no less of an assassin, which did not prevent (the late Israeli premier) Yitzhak Rabin from extending his hand to him," he said.
Arafat and Rabin signed the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords that established the Palestinian Authority.
Israeli officials said a prisoner exchange for Shalit had been agreed through Egyptian mediation with Hamas but that the talks broke down after the Islamist movement violently seized control of Gaza in mid-June.
- AFP
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