Gilad Shalit - Israeli Society Perceptions and Activities

Israeli Society Perceptions and Activities

The vast majority of Israel's citizens are in favor of the deal, although a vocal minority opposes it, creating essentially two camps.

One camp supports the release of Shalit on Hamas's conditions. According to the Dahaf Polling Institute, 79 percent of Israelis favour this deal, which would include the release of over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners and the deportation of some of them outside the territory of the Palestinian National Authority or restricting them to Gaza.

A second camp said that Shalit should be released, but not on Hamas's conditions. They argue that the correct approach is to protect Israelis if the prisoners are released. According to the Dahaf Polling Institute, 14 percent of Israelis are in this camp.

Others believe that the disagreement among Israelis represents rifts and changes within Israeli society. Attorney Dalia Gavriely-Nur, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University, said that the camp opposing the prisoners deal is holding onto a view of collectivist society, in which the individual was expected to sacrifice himself for the good of society; the camp supporting the prisoner release is expressing, however, a high value on the sanctity of life, that symbolizes a shift to a more privatized society.

Noam Shalit, Gilad Shalit's father, urged the UN to take all possible measures to implement the findings of the Goldstone Report. The Goldstone Report called for Shalit's immediate release and, while he was in captivity, for access to him by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

On the evening of Shalit's 23rd birthday, on 28 August 2009, thousands attended a vigil for Shalit at the Western Wall, and dozens of activists protested outside Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv, slamming Defense Minister Ehud Barak and criticizing IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) organized in August 2009 a pro-Shalit campaign on the social networking site Twitter. Twitter users drove Shalit's name to the second-highest trend on the day of his 23rd birthday. Tweets for Shalit ranged from the demand "Free Shalit", to requests for international supervision of the case.

In several incidents during 2009, leaders of the campaign to free Shalit demonstrated at the prisons in which Palestinian detainees were held, preventing visits by Palestinian prisoners' families. One such demonstration at the Erez crossing on the Gaza border blocked the passage of food and medicine to the Gaza Strip. Israel said it would not ease its blockade of Gaza until Shalit was freed. The abducted soldier's long plight was extremely emotional issue within Israel, with large, tearful rallies on his birthdays and frequent media appearances by his father. Reflecting wide support for the cause, one Israeli TV anchor ended his daily newscast by mournfully reciting how many days the soldier has been held captive.

Israeli opponents of such a deal spoke out, warning that releasing top Palestinian militants could result in the deaths of many Israelis in renewed attacks, as well as increased Palestinian motivation to kidnap more soldiers in the future. Israeli analyst Dan Schueftan called the possible swap deal "the greatest significant victory for terrorism that Israel has made possible."

On 17 October 2011, Purdue University Professor Louis Rene Beres made the case against freeing Shalit in an op-ed column in the Jerusalem Post:

No modern government has the legal right to free terrorists in exchange for its own kidnapped citizens, military or civilian. Under long-standing international law, every state has a primary obligation to protect its citizens. Yet it appears that tomorrow, Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will exchange Palestinian terrorists for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. Any such exchange, however humane to Schalit and his family, would imperil thousands of other Israelis.