“I think there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process,” – Dhimmi Carter, April 13.
“Hamas chief threatens to capture more Israelis,” from Agence France-Presse, May 9:
DAMASCUS (AFP) “” Exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on Friday threatened that his Islamist movement would capture Israeli citizens if the Jewish state does not release tens of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
“If our enemies don’t set free our prisoners held in the Israeli jails, Gilad Shalit will not be the last” to be captured, he said of the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Palestinian militants in 2006.
There are “11,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails,” Meshaal said in a speech at a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus to mark the “Naqba” or catastrophe of Israel’s creation 60 years ago.
Shalit was captured almost two years ago by militant groups including Hamas in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip on June 15, 2006.
Meshaal has repeatedly said that Shalit will not be released unless Israel frees Palestinian prisoners.
Last month former US president Jimmy Carter said after controversial talks with Meshaal in Damascus that Hamas had agreed to allow Shalit to write a letter to his parents.