Fatah leader Mohammad Dahlan said negotiations to secure the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit have hit a wall because of disagreement among Hamas leadership, Haaretz reports via Israel Radio.

Gilad Shalit

Khaled Mashaal, leader of the Hamas policy bureau, has been key in orchestrating the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange between Israel and Gaza, but Meshaal has "lost faith in the negotiation process," said Dahlan to a Jordanian newspaper.

Hamas hopes to exchange roughly 1400 prisoners for the soldier who was captured in a raid in June 2006.

Hamas has not responded to Israel's latest proposal, made in January through a German mediator.  In February, then senior negotiating team member for the Shalit negotiations, Mahmoud Az-Zahar resigned from him post as a result of internal Hamas tensions.  The negotiator wanted to take a more moderate approach to the prison swap, but, according to Az-Zahar, Meshaal "refused to make any concessions."

Former Hamas military wing leader Abdullah Barghouti said earlier this month that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is responsible for the delay in freeing Shalit.  Israel has made two key demands in the prisoner swap negotiations - 1) refusal to release some considered dangerous militants and 2) insistence that roughly 100 of those to be release not be allowed to return to the West Bank.

Barghouti addressed the Shalit family, saying: "I am telling his family that his condition is good. He has food, he has a room and we are not mistreating our prisoner."

Barghouti is currently serving 67 life sentences for terror attacks in 2003.  His statement came during a hearing to extend his solitary confinement. 


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Photo:  Doug 20022 - Flickr

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