Israeli's captors vow to hold firm

SOUTHERN GAZA STRIP -- A senior commander of one of the Palestinian militant groups holding a captured Israeli soldier said last night that the militants would never execute the captive, but neither would they release him unless Israel meets their demand to release 1,000 jailed Palestinians, including top leaders of militant factions.

``Our Islamic principles demand that we take care of war prisoners and treat them well," said the commander, who asked to be identified only by his nom de guerre, Abu Radwan.

He refused to say whether 19-year-old Corporal Gilad Shalit was healthy or whether he was still in the Gaza Strip, declaring that in order to get information, Israel must release the more than 400 prisoners who are under 18 or female.

Though he said the militants would ``absolutely not" execute Shalit, he warned that the soldier could be killed in an Israeli bombardment or a commando rescue attempt, and added that if he grabbed a weapon to try to escape, ``there is no guarantee for his life."

Abu Radwan, 41, one of a handful of top leaders of the Popular Resistance Committees, met three American journalists in a walled garden of fig and pomegranate trees in the southern Gaza Strip on the condition that the exact location not be revealed.

Three militant organizations -- the Popular Resistance Committees, the armed wing of the ruling party Hamas, and a previously unknown group called the Army of Islam -- jointly claimed responsibility for abducting Shalit in a cross-border raid on June 25. It's unclear if any among them has a leadership role; the groups have issued joint statements that say they are jointly holding Shalit and making decisions about his fate.

Abu Radwan said that the militants who initially captured Shalit handed him over to another cell that is avoiding telephone surveillance by communicating with the outside world only through ``the old-fashioned way -- papers passed from one person to another to another."

``The kidnappers, the ones who supervised the heroic operation, the ones who are managing the crisis, none of them know where he is hidden," he said.

Abu Radwan spoke as Israeli troops and tanks pushed farther into the northern Gaza Strip last night, their deepest advance since they entered the territory a week ago in an effort to rescue Shalit and stop militants' near-daily launches of homemade rockets into Israel. Israeli officials have declared that if militants don't release Shalit unconditionally, the military will free him by force.

In an hour-long interview, Abu Radwan detailed what he said were the strategy and aims of Shalit's captors. They planned the operation to kidnap a soldier, seeking an exchange for Palestinian prisoners, he said.

He said they were prepared to hold Shalit for decades -- comparing him to Ron Arad, an Israel airman captured by Shi'ite militants in Lebanon in 1986 and not heard from since -- and declared that no Israeli invasion of Gaza or assassination of top leaders could induce them to release him.

``Whatever the Israelis do, we will not release the soldier. [If they kill Palestinian president] Abu Mazen, [Prime Minister Ismail] Haniyeh, all the government, if they invade, reoccupy, whatever, there is no chance that we will release him."

Abu Radwan, who survived an Israeli airstrike in 2004 that left his car a crumpled hulk he displays in his yard, said he spends every night in a different place. In the garden of an associate, he listened carefully to the hum of an Israeli surveillance drone overhead, but appeared to relax as goats bleated outside the wall, coffee was served, and Arabic pop played inside the house.

Abu Radwan told of how he began his militant career at the age of 12, spray-painting graffiti and acting as a lookout. He said he was jailed for 14 years after planting a bomb on a Tel Aviv bus in 1984, killing one person, and eventually became a senior leader of the Popular Resistance Committees.

The PRCs opposed the peace process and advocated continued attacks on Israel to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The organization emerged in 2002 as the first militant group to blow up an Israeli tank, and was linked to a 2003 roadside bombing that killed three Americans in a diplomatic convoy.

Six soldiers died in two PRC attacks on tanks in Gaza that an Israeli spokesman at the time called ``warfare in the conventional sense . . . something we've never seen before from the Palestinians."

Abu Radwan called the June 25 raid the group's biggest military success since then. Militants dug a 300-meter tunnel under the border fence, surprised an army observation post, threw grenades into a tank, killed two soldiers, and grabbed Shalit.

``This operation brought back dignity and pride to the Palestinian people," he said, noting that it came after a month in which more than 30 Palestinians, including 13 civilians, died in Israeli airstrikes.

Abu Radwan is one of two PRC commanders said to be the most influential after an Israeli airstrike killed the group's founder, Jamal Abu Samhadana, on June 8.

Abu Radwan declared that negotiations with Egyptian mediators were at a standstill.

Israeli officials have publicly rejected a prisoner exchange, but in the past Israel has agreed to lopsided exchanges for Israeli hostages or their remains. Palestinians widely support prisoner exchanges.

But Abu Radwan said militants distrust proposals to free Shalit in exchange for Israeli promises to release Palestinian prisoners later.

In past exchanges Israel has released petty criminals, he said, demanding instead the release of 1,000 specific militants.

``We don't trust the enemy," he said.