Scher and Suleiman Meet: Discuss Palestinians and Shalit

Attorney Gilad Scher met with Director of Egyptian Intelligence General Omar Suleiman to discuss the current situation in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.  This included suggestions on how Israel should react to the failure of the Palestinians forming a single government and the unsuccessful negotiations for the safe return of Gilad Shalit. 

Shimon Shiffer in Yedioth Ahronoth reports:

"Egypt supports Israel's position that once negotiations are renewed with the Palestinians, they need to undertake that in a final status arrangement they will declare an end of their demands from Israel," reads a classified report that was recently submitted to officials in Jerusalem.

   The report was written by Attorney Gilad Scher in the wake of meetings he held with senior Egyptian intelligence officials, first and foremost Director of Egyptian Intelligence General Omar Suleiman.

The Egyptians say that the negotiations need to be conducted on the basis of the principle of two states for two peoples, and that in the end, Israel will withdraw to the 1967 lines with land swaps adjustments so as to allow for the major settlement blocs to remain under Israeli sovereignty.

On another issue, Suleiman admitted that the efforts to form a Palestinian national unity government have met with failure. He said it was his assessment that Hamas was not prepared to give Fatah any foothold in the Gaza Strip and, on the flip side, that Fatah was not prepared to offer Hamas any partnership in governing the West Bank. The message that Suleiman sought to convey to the leadership in Jerusalem was that he thought it was better for Israel to agree to a long-term truce agreement with the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, noting that Egypt would continue to work to prevent arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip from the Sinai peninsula.

In a different article also in Yeditoh Ahronoth, Shimon Shiffer writes:

 "Gilad Shalit will be released only after Israel forgoes its demand that the Hamas prisoners who are supposed to be released be deported to Gaza," said Director of Egyptian Intelligence General Omar Suleiman a number of days ago.

...he [Suleiman] invited Attorney Gilad Scher, who was the director general of the Prime Minister's Bureau under Ehud Barak, to meet him urgently in Cairo. The meeting was also attended by the director of Egypt's espionage organization, General Omar Kinawi, and other senior Egyptian intelligence officials.

   "What does Netanyahu want," asked the host. "Ninety-five percent of the deal was completed by Ofer Dekel and Yuval Diskin," Suleiman said. "Hamas isn't going to agree to your demand to expel 144 of the prisoners that you've agreed to release to the Gaza Strip."

People involved in the talks with the Egyptians said that for the time being the chances of completing the negotiations successfully are very small. They said that the problem resides in the Prime Minister's Bureau: "Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has refrained from making the most weighty decision as to whether to adopt the framework that was already set for the deal with Hamas."

The assessment in Israel and Egypt is that the price for Shalit's release isn't going to change: 450 prisoners, whose names appear on the original list that was submitted by Hamas. That is the reason why Hagai Hadas, appointed by the prime minister to conduct talks for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit instead of Ofer Dekel, has refrained from traveling to Egypt for the time being.