JERUSALEM (JTA) — The parents of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit are living in a protest tent set up across from the prime minister’s residence.
Noam and Aviva Shalit say they will stay in the tent erected Sunday in Jerusalem until their son, captured in a cross-border raid in May 2006, is released or until Ehud Olmert’s term expires. Gilad Shalit is believed to be held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Olmert said Friday that rallies calling on the government to do more to get Shalit released were “unhelpful.”
“The prime minister mainly tells us what we can’t do, but we don’t see him doing anything that yields any kind of result,” Noam Shalit told Army Radio Sunday. “Our test of things is the outcome of actions, and under this test Gilad is still being held by Hamas.”
Across the street from the Shalit family’s tent, relatives of terror victims set up their own tent to show Olmert that they were against releasing terrorists involved in attacks against Israelis in an exchange for Shalit.
The photographs of 180 people, including children, killed by terrorists who had been released in past exchanges were posted in the tent.
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