Israel and Palestine have failed so far to agree on the date of swapping Palestinian prisoners for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Ghazi Hamad, a Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, told the Voice of Palestine on Sunday.
Hamas leaders announced on Friday that a deal between Israel and Hamas on the exchange of over 1,000 jailed Palestinians for Israeli soldier Shalit would begin on Tuesday.
Hamad, who is a deputy foreign minister in the Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas and who played a key role in reaching the prisoner swap deal, said no agreement had been reached so far on the number of Palestinian women to be released from Israeli prisons and the number of Palestinian prisoners to be deported.
According to the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoners’ Affairs, there are 37 Palestinian women kept in Israeli prisoners and Palestinians are demanding that all of them be released while Israel is ready to free only 27 of them.
Hamad said that indirect talks sponsored by Egypt would be held in Cairo on Sunday to try to resolve disagreements.
Shalit, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, was captured in June 2006, aged 19, by Palestinian militants in a raid near the Gaza Strip.
