DAMASCUS (AFP) — Exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal on Friday threatened that his Islamist movement would capture Israeli citizens if the Jewish state does not release tens of thousands of Palestinian prisoners.
"If our enemies don't set free our prisoners held in the Israeli jails, Gilad Shalit will not be the last" to be captured, he said of the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Palestinian militants in 2006.
There are "11,600 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails," Meshaal said in a speech at a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus to mark the "Naqba" or catastrophe of Israel's creation 60 years ago.
Shalit was captured almost two years ago by militant groups including Hamas in a cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip on June 15, 2006.
Meshaal has repeatedly said that Shalit will not be released unless Israel frees Palestinian prisoners.
Last month former US president Jimmy Carter said after controversial talks with Meshaal in Damascus that Hamas had agreed to allow Shalit to write a letter to his parents.
Carter angered Israel and the United States by meeting Meshaal as both countries consider the radical Hamas movement to be a terror group despite its victory in 2006 Palestinian elections.
If Israel agreed to a list of prisoners to be exchanged, and the first group was released, Shalit would be sent to Egypt pending the final releases, Carter said in an opinion piece for The New York Times after his talks with Meshaal.
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