Abu Mazen speaks:
Abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit will be released soon, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in a television interview on Friday.
“We are undertaking efforts to free Shalit and these efforts will soon come to fruition,” Abbas told France 24 television of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized last June in a cross-border raid from Gaza into southern Israel. “We are optimistic.” — Ha’aretz
Well, we are not so optimistic, because we know that the decision to release Shalit is in the hands of Hamas, and possibly even Syrian or Iranian elements, and not those of Abbas. Mahmoud Abbas is an abstract construction which exists only to give the world someone acceptable to talk to who is part of the Palestinian government. It doesn’t even matter who the real Mahmoud Abbas is or what he thinks.
Shalit will go home when Israel capitulates and agrees to release a ridiculous number of murderers as ransom, or when Israeli security forces find him…may this day come soon.