Gershon Baskin, an Israeli hostage negotiator, is aware of what it takes to make a take care of Hamas. He started contact with a senior Hamas official, Ghazi Hamid, in 2006 and the connection laid the muse for the deal that freed the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.
“I used to be targeted totally on releasing Gilad Shalit,” Baskin tells Michael Safi. “That was my mission. That was my job. And I might speak to the satan if that was essential to carry Gilad Shalit dwelling alive. So I didn’t cease to contemplate their political positions, or their manifesto and their want to kill everybody, together with me.”
After the deal, Baskin stayed in contact with Hamid, hoping the connection would ultimately assist to carry peace. “I knew from the very starting that if we’re going to succeed, it’s going to be based mostly on the private relationship that we develop. So I made certain over time that we had been speaking, that we talked about household, we talked about desires and hopes, we talked about our childhood.”
After the 7 October assaults, Hamid was interviewed on Lebanese TV. He mentioned: “We should train Israel a lesson, and we are going to do that time and again.”
“It was fairly devastating,” Baskin says. “I wrote a letter to him at that time during which I mentioned I by no means need to speak to him once more.
“However a month later, Palestinian buddy of mine mentioned, ‘you realize, Gershon, you made a mistake, as a result of possibly your contact with Ghazi Hamid might save lives.’ And I wrote to him once more and I mentioned: ‘Ghazi, if speaking with it can save you human lives, I’m prepared to resume our connection.’ Three weeks later he contacted me and since then we’ve been involved.”
{Photograph}: Amnon Gutman/The Guardian
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