Cairo/Damascus/Gaza City - - Negotiations between Israeli officials and Hamas over a possible deal to release captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit now hinge on whether two imprisoned Palestinian leaders would be freed but allowed to remain in the occupied territories, Palestinian politicians said Tuesday. Representatives of Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, arrived in Cairo on Monday for indirect negotiations on a prisoner-swap deal that could see Shalit, captured by Hamas in 2006, freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
"We have a hotline with our brothers, the Hamas delegation, who are negotiating in Cairo, and we are following their progress step by step," Abu Ahmed Fouad, of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), told the German Press Agency
