It is early Thursday morning, March 12, and I am at the protest tent set up this week opposite the prime minister’s residence by Gilad Shalit’s family. Outside the tent there is a large board with squares representing each day of Gilad’s captivity. Small handwritten notes have been posted on many of them. One asks: Which “shalit” – a play on the Hebrew word for leader – will bring Gilad home?
Next week it will be 1,000 days since Gilad was captured, and next week Ehud Olmert will leave office. It is a watershed moment for the campaign. In every interview, including those he gave yesterday to Al Jazeera and the BBC in Arabic, Noam Shalit has the same message “I appeal to Hamas to hurry up. There will be no better deal than this and Gilad’s release will bring relief to the Palestinian people.”
Noam Shalit is pale and drawn, but he speaks politely and with endless patience to the steady stream of reporters – who are of course the lifeblood of the campaign – and other visitors. Aviva Shalit is not in the tent at the moment. The family's courage and dignity, despite being under the most appalling strain, are remarkable.
There is a constant backdrop of hooting by passing cars but for once it isn’t the usual Israeli drivers’ impatient gesture at fellow road users; it’s a show of support for Gilad Shalit.
It is still relatively quiet so I have the opportunity to sit down and talk to Noam for a few minutes. Since human rights is a hot issue in Gaza, I ask about the abuse of Gilad’s human rights and the failure of the International Red Cross to become involved and visit, which is the very basic right of a prisoner of war. Noam clearly doubts the efficacy of the IRC, and he turns the focus instead to the Palestinians who are themselves, he says, being held hostage in Gaza. “They are under siege, they live in abject poverty - some are living in the collapsed debris of homes that were bombed during the war - and they are not allowed any form of protest. Thousands of ordinary people are paying the price of the unwillingness of Hamas to show flexibility over the terms of Gilad’s release. Israel is prepared to pay a huge price and I urge Hamas not to lose this opportunity to cut a deal.”
There is the rub: everyone in Israel would be overjoyed if Gilad was returned home safely. But it is difficult to accept that murderers and the masterminds of some of the worst terror attacks will be part of the "huge price" Israel will pay.
I can well understand the conundrum. I have a son in the army and I like to think that the state will do everything to protect and care for him during his service. On the other hand, my sister was injured in the 1972 Lod Airport massacre, in which 25 people were killed by three Japanese Red Army terrorists and I remember my family’s outrage when Kozo Okamoto, the only surviving perpetrator, was released in 1985 with over a thousand other prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli soldiers.
By now the tent is filling up with visitors and reporters. Noam Shalit gives an interview to Channel 2. He chats in French to a tourist from Paris. Eleven members of Maccabi Great Britain’s annual “Just for Women” 5-day mission to Israel arrive to show their solidarity. Noam speaks to them in English. “What can we do to help in London?” one of the women asks me. “The atmosphere is so difficult now in the UK vis a vis Israel.” I introduce them to Zelda Harris, a veteran activist in the UK for the 35s in the 1970s, and for many other causes here in Israel. We have some ideas for them and we agree to be in contact if there is no progress after next week.
A couple arrives from Hadera, together with their handicapped baby. “We had to come; we know what it is to fight for the life of a child,” the father tells me.
Suddenly there is the sound of singing, clarinet and bongo, and a large crowd dances towards the tent. A bar mitzvah boy sits atop the shoulders of one of the men. The boy has just been called up and the celebrants have come straight from shul to visit the Shalits. Two men blow the shofar and after a rendition of “Shalom Aleichem” the party moves on.
The atmosphere is quite surreal.
I ask Yisrael, Noam’s cousin, how the family is bearing up. “Noam is strong. It’s hard for Aviva. We just carry on day by day and now we can’t think beyond next week.”
Indeed, no-one connected to the campaign is prepared to think beyond next week. “We feel the clock ticking,” says Devora, a campaign volunteer who is distributing yellow ribbons and collecting signatures for a petition demanding that the government agrees to the prisoner exchange. “The only important thing is to ensure that the outgoing government brings Gilad home.”