Gilad Shalit
Photo: Reuters
Bereaved parents vow to fight swap deal
Bereaved father calls on terror victims to swamp prosecution with letters of appeal against release of terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit, also asks MKs to extend 48-hour period allotted for public debate
Bereaved parents and victims of terror attacks, who were rebuffed
by the High Court of Justice Tuesday when it refused to publish a list of prisoners being considered for a swap deal, said they would bog down the State Prosecutor's Office with letters of appeal.
The petitioners said they would also appeal to MKs with a demand to extend the 48-hour period allotted for a public debate on the deal intended to release kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit,
in order to allow them more time to raise objections to it.
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Yossi Mendelevitch, bereaved father of Yuval, who died in a terror attack on a Haifa bus in 2003, told Ynet he did not understand the need for censorship.
"If Hamas gets the list, what are the security concerns here?" he asked. His question followed the Supreme Court's decision to refrain from overturning the IDF censor's decision not to release a list of prisoners up for exchange.
"We ask all terror victims to appeal now against the release of the terrorists who murdered their loved ones," Mendelevitch said. The Justice Ministry announced earlier that the families were already permitted to ask for the names of prisoners included in the deal in order to file their complaints with the ministry.
Supreme Court justices who rejected the bereaved parents' appeal said the ministry, in providing the petitioners with such an option, had found a reasonable substitute for the revealing of the entire list.
Mendelevitch and other members of his organization, 'The Three Fathers', have already sent letters to bereaved families, asking them to send attached complaint forms to the State Prosecutor's Office.
But Mendelevitch stressed that the battle would not end there. "The aim is mainly to focus on the issue of the 48 hours from the moment of publication of the names, which is the time period we get in order to sound our voices," he said. "This is a very short period of time and we will not be able to individually evaluate such a great number of released terrorists."
Mendelevitch said he had appealed to MKs on this matter. "The government makes decisions in the dead of night and then a window of 48 hours will be opened, which is not enough for a full public debate on the matter," he said in a letter to the MKs.
"The public is meant to understand who the prisoners are, what they did, how many dozens of Israelis they have murdered, and what they said during their time in prison – whether they expressed remorse or promise to return to a life of terror."
Aviad Glickman contributed to this report
