Deputy defense minister says demonstration shows weakness; organizers say rallies can only help.
By YAAKOV KATZ, TOVAH LAZAROFFGilad Schalit 248.88(photo credit: Courtesy)
A demonstration calling for St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit's release planned for Sunday is detrimental to the negotiations slated to be renewed later this week for the release of the kidnapped soldier, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna'i told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
The demonstration is being organized by a number of groups, including the Kibbutz Movement, and will be held in Kerem Shalom, where Schalit was abducted.
"This demonstration demonstrates weakness," Vilna'i said in an exclusive interview with the Post which will appear in its entirety in Friday's paper.
"If the government wasn't doing anything and had forgotten him [Schalit] I would say: hold demonstrations. But we haven't forgotten and we are acting all the time."
Vilna'i revealed that the Egyptian-mediated negotiations - which had been suspended for several months - were scheduled to begin again in the coming days in Cairo.
Hamas, Vilna'i said, viewed the demonstration as weakness. "If they see we are pressured then they will say, 'Why should we hurry?'" he said.
But for Schalit's family and even for those who did not know the young soldier, but have taken up the call to work for his release, Vilna'i's comments fell on deaf ears.
"One of the reasons these rallies are held is that there is no deal [to release Gilad] and therefore I can not see any harm that can be done," Schalit's father, Noam, told the Post.
He added that he had met earlier this week with Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.
"I do not see that anything new is happening," he said. The family has been waiting over two years for a deal to come through.
He noted that most of the events were organized by friends of Schalit's or by those who had rallied to the cause of his release. While the family had shown up at many of these events including a pre-Yom Kippur rally at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, they had not organized them.
"Clearly the public feels as if there is a need for these events," said Noam.
On Sunday afternoon, the coalition of groups including the Kibbutz Movement, youth groups, as well as student, parent and teacher associations have organized a rally on behalf of Schalit at Kerem Shalom on the Gaza border, near where the young soldier was kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006.
One of the organizers, Hadar Miller, said that obviously if it appeared that the government was doing something, there would be no need for events like this one.
One of the more vocal advocates for Schalit's release, Miki Goldwasser, who on Wednesday spoke on the Golan Heights at a youth rally for the captive soldier, told the Post she knew from first-hand experience that these events help.
It was the outpouring of public support over a two-year period that helped the government conclude a deal in July to secure the release of her son Ehud's body and that of fellow reservist Eldad Regev, she said.
Both men had been killed by Hizbullah in July 2006, but their bodies were taken and their families did not learn of their fate until the deal was reached and the bodies transferred back to Israel.
"I know what it is like to wait for your son," said Goldwasser. In the case of Schalit, she added, it was obvious the public had to act, because "it is two years and Gilad is not home yet. What else can one do, except to shout and to demonstrate? If only I could trust that there is something that is really being done for him."
Top in her mind as she works on behalf of Schalit is the story of Ron Arad, who disappeared in 1988 after he had been held captive in Lebanon for two years.
"I cannot tell anyone how to act. But I know one thing. We lost Ron Arad because we were not willing to pay the price," said Goldwasser. As in the case of Schalit, she added, the government wasted time arguing over how many prisoners should be released and who those prisoners should be. But "by the time they agreed, it was too late."
Goldwasser said she fears Schalit could suffer the same fate.
"Then they will cry, 'Why didn't we act?'" she said.
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