Rumours abound: Gilad Shalit could soon be free

A sudden flurry of activity in the protracted negotiations to secure the freedom of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who has been a captive of Hamas since June 2006, is raising hopes that a deal might finally be within reach.  

According to reports in the Arab media, Gerhard Conrad, the German intelligence officer who has been liaising between the Israeli government and the Islamic militant organisation, recently visited Gaza to discuss  the resumption of negotiations to end Shalit's ordeal.

Although Hamas still refuses to confirm this, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has acknowledged that new talks are already under way.  One well-informed Arab newspaper has claimed that a prisoner swap involving a senior Palestinian militant is top of the agenda, while another reported that Conrad was "optimistic" about the prospects of an eventual breakthrough.

Nothing has been heard publicly of Shalit, 24, who was abducted by Hamas fighters in a daring cross-border raid launched from Gaza, since he made a brief video appearance in October last year, announcing that he was being well treated (Israel has threatened that "the sky will fall" if he was harmed).

But the former US president Jimmy Carter revealed recently that he had secured Hamas approval, via the group's leadership in Syria, to deliver a new hand-written letter from the soldier to his family (on a previous occasion he had handed over a moving message from Shalit's parents to their son).

Opinion polls in Israel suggest there is a clear majority in favour of negotiating Shalit's release, even at the cost of releasing Palestinian detainees - though there is substantial resistance to handing Hamas a propaganda coup by complying with its core demands.

In June this year, his parents led some 10,000 supporters on a solidarity march from his hometown to the Prime Minister's official residence in Jerusalem. In response to public pressure for negotiations, Netanyahu has made it clear that that Israel was willing "to pay a heavy price, but not any price" to get its missing soldier back.  

The government has not responded officially to recent reports that it would be willing in principle to release the influential and charismatic Palestinian leader Marwan Baghouti, currently serving five life sentences for involvement in murderous terrorist attacks on Jewish targets.

Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence services remain convinced that Shalit is being held somewhere in Gaza City's sprawling refugee camps, strongholds of Hamas whose warren of narrow alleys would make any attempt to free him by force a hazardous operation almost certainly involving heavy civilian casualties.

Last month, however, the Jerusalem Post reported that an attempt tby Israeli intelligence to discover Shalit's location with the help of a Palestinian collaborator who had bugged Hamas communications networks had been foiled by the arrest of the turncoat. ·