Sarkozy sends letter to Noam Schalit

French leader says "no circumstances can justify" continued captivity.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Noam Schalit at agriculture fair 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Noam Schalit at agriculture fair 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
As the four-year anniversary of the capture of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit by Hamas terrorists was being marked in Israel and around the world, the captured soldier's father, Noam Schalit, met with French Ambassador Christoph Bigot and received a message from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
In his letter to Schalit, Sarkozy stated that while he found the loss of Gilad Schalit's liberty repulsive, only negotiations - and not the blockade on Gaza - would lead to his release.
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"Like every French citizen, I am disgusted by how it is possible to deprive a human being of his liberty and even – with the exceptional of a few all-too-rare opportunities – to deny him contact with his family and friends ... [and] the right to visits from the Red Cross," the French president stated.
"No circumstances, even those imposed on the residents of Gaza, justify this type of behavior."
Schalits to march from Mitzpe Hila to J'lem
Meanwhile on Friday,  Aviva and Noam Schalit announced that they would begin a protest march on Sunday from their home in Mitzpe Hila, in the Western Galilee, to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem.
“My son has been wasting away for four years in Hamas dungeons,” Aviva Schalit said in a video released on Friday night. “I haven’t touched him in 1,460 days – I haven’t hugged Gilad, I haven’t spoken with Gilad. Four endless years, four years of prolonged suffering,” she said in the video.
“I believe that after four years in which an entire country was unable to bring a captive soldier back home, it must pay the price before it is too late. “
Schalit stressed that she did not view her son’s release within the framework of a prisoner exchange agreement as a “strategic concession.” She asserted that a “much bigger strategic concession would be to abandon all our values – essentially, comradeship and companionship.”