Gaza City/Jerusalem/Damascus - A delegation of top Hamas leaders from the Gaza Strip was in Syria Wednesday to consult with the Palestinian Islamist movement's exiled leadership over whether to accept Israel's latest offer for a prisoners swap. The delegation headed by Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas' strongman in Gaza and its de-facto foreign minister in the coastal enclave under its control, arrived in Damascus late Tuesday, Osama al-Muzini, a Hamas official in Gaza, said.
Currently two camps existed within Hamas, he explained in a statement e-mailed to reporters, one which favoured accepting the Israeli offer and another which said the movement should stand firm on its initial demands.
Hamas is demanding that Israel release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, among them hardcore militants, in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured in a June 2006 raid from Gaza on an Israeli army base near the strip.
The German mediator overseeing the indirect talks between the Israelis and Hamas, who do not recognize each other, submitted Israel's latest list with names of prisoners to the Hamas delegation in a meeting in Cairo Tuesday.
That list is said not to include some 70 hardcore militants who appeared on the list Hamas had submitted previously, including Ibrahim Hamed, from Nablus on the northern West Bank, and Abdullah al-Barghouti, from the central West Bank city of Ramallah.
Hamed, the former commander of Hamas' military wing in the West Bank, and al-Barghouti, who allegedly manufactured bombs, are accused by Israel of being responsible for suicide bombings, many of them in Jerusalem in the early 2000s, in which dozens of Israelis were killed. Both were sentenced by Israeli courts to multiple life- sentences, one for each death they were found responsible for.
According to Hamas sources, the German mediator informed the Hamas delegation in Tuesday's talks in Cairo that several countries, including Ireland, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Qatar and Yemen, were willing to absorb some 160 of the to-be-freed prisoners.
Hamas had initially refused the Israeli demand that some of the hardcore militants whom it considers still dangerous be deported abroad.
"There are two different opinions (within Hamas)," al-Mazuni, the Hamas official in charge of the Shalit file, said. Explaining the internal debate, he said one called for insisting on Hamas' original list, while the "other opinion says these are negotiations and let's get what we can get at the end of the negotiations."
He said "tangible progress" had been made in the mediation by Germany and Egypt over the past days and that he hoped a deal could be reached "soon."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tuesday that no deal has been reached, and said an agreement would be brought before his cabinet for a vote. He convened the inner security cabinet Wednesday afternoon for a discussion of a proposed 10-month Israeli settlement construction freeze.
A spokesman for the premier refused to say if the ministers would also be briefed on the latest Israeli offer for Shalit's release.
