GAZA: When quizzed about the taking into custody of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian militants, many residents of Gaza say they think he should be freed, but only, of course, if Israel gives up something in return.

It is, they say, the only way to resolve the crisis.

“This is the language we have learnt from Israel,” says Mahmoud Metwale, an iron worker in the Jabalya refugee camp, speaking as if the rules of the game were obvious to everyone.

“The Israelis taught us that before we give something up we must get something in return. That is how it is done.”

That is not the way Israel, which has sent military forces back into Gaza less than a year after pulling out of the territory, sees it.

The soldier, 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, who was seized eight days ago, is being held hostage and being used, Israel says, as a bargaining chip. The militants are demanding that Israel free Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel jails.

If the soldier is exchanged for prisoners, Israel fears it will give militants a green light to carry out more PoWs to try to extract further concessions from the Jewish state.

“The government of Israel will not yield to the ‘extortion’ of the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government, which are led by murderous terrorist organisations,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office asserted on Monday.

“We will not conduct any negotiations on a prisoner release.”

The result, so far, is an intense, high-stakes stand-off.

Militants may hold the ace — a soldier Israel has said it will do everything in its power to return alive — but Israel holds most of the other cards, including the threat of using overwhelming military might against militants and Hamas.

“It is a very sensitive and very dangerous situation,”

said Mordechai Kedar, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University.

“It is like a barrel full of jet fuel with too many people playing nearby with matches.”

The militants have set a deadline for Israel to meet its demands or face unspecified consequences. Israel has rejected the ultimatum and said that the crisis may take weeks or even months to resolve.

The differing time-scales reveal something about the pressures each side is under.

The militants want to extract concessions as quickly as possible, before Israel finds out where the soldier is being held and mounts an operation to rescue him, and before popular support for their action wanes as hardships in Gaza intensify.

Deploying forces in the southern Gaza Strip and launching nightly air strikes, Israel has been steadily ratcheting up pressure on Hamas, the Islamist group that heads the Palestinian government and whose military wing was part of the operation to take the soldier into custody.

Observers are not putting too much stock in the militants’ deadline, seeing it more as a negotiating ploy.

“I don’t think we’re going to end up with a body at 6 a.m. on Tuesday as that removes the militants’ leverage,” said Mouin Rabbani, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“The soldier only has a value to them if he’s alive.”

While back-channel negotiations may be going on with the help of Egyptian intermediaries to set up a deal that secures Shalit’s release, in the meantime Israel is applying as much pressure as it can to Hamas at all levels. —Reuters