'Hamas wanted me alive, a dead soldier is worthless' - Gilad Schalit

• Published date: 26 September 2021
• Author: ANNA AHRONHEIM
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"A living soldier, his value is different from that of a dead soldier. It was important for them to keep me alive," he said during a talk with Holocaust survivors. While he was afraid that his health might deteriorate, he said: "I was not sick. I was very thin, even now I am thin but I was a little thinner."

"All in all, as an organization, Hamas wanted to keep me in good shape, in good physical condition," he said.

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The meeting between Schalit and the group was aired on N12 on Friday night.

Schalit was kidnapped on June 25, 2006, when the tank he was serving in along the Gaza Strip was attacked by Hamas terrorists who infiltrated the Israeli side of the border through a tunnel they dug near the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The tank's commander, Lt. Hanan Barak, as well as the other soldier in the tank, St.-Sgt. Pavel Slutsker, were killed and one other soldier was wounded. Schalit was abducted and brought back to the Strip, where he was held until a prisoner exchange deal was agreed upon.

He was handed back to Israel in a deal brokered by German and Egyptian mediators on October 18, 2011, five years after he was abducted, in exchange for 1,027 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Schalit, who rarely speaks to the media, told the group that while he was being held, "the country gave me hope," despite having a "certain pessimism and a lot of uncertainty" about being released "because it was impossible to know how it would end."

During his five years as a Hamas hostage, the group kept him in one location and moved him to a different location only a few times. He said he was unaware of the efforts to free him until later in his captivity when he listened to Israeli media on the radio.

"I had a hard time hearing it, because all the negotiations would end in disappointment, so it was very...