The Release of Israeli-American Ilan Grapel

Anchor Lisa Mullins talks to David Horovitz, former editor of the Jerusalem Post about the release of Israeli-American citizen Ilan Grapel, who was held by Egyptian authorities since June.

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Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Israeli-American Ilan Grapel was released to day by Egypt. He was immediately flown to Israel. Grapel was arrested in June in Cairo. Egyptian authorities accused him of being an Israeli spy. Israel denied that, but it did agree to a prisoner swap. Grapel was freed in exchange for 25 Egyptians being held by Israel. David Horovitz is an Israeli journalist and former editor of the Jerusalem Post. He says this exchange may help improve relations between Egypt and Israel.

David Horovitz: I think there is an awareness that perhaps this signals a certain deepening path of ties with the transitional leadership in Egypt, which will have been of some relief to Israel because Egypt has been such a picture of instability. But I would stress that by comparison to the recent release of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who’ve been held captive by Hamas, this is emphatically a much smaller and lower profile, and lower stakes affair.

Mullins: How so? How is it the case that they’re different?

Horovitz: Well, I think in the case of Grapel we’ve known that he was held by an admittedly somewhat unstable Egypt, but by Egypt and we’ve known where he is and what might await him. And the people that Israel is freeing this time, most of them are Bedouin from the Sinai. They do not constitute the kind of threat to Israel’s security on the whole that some of the Palestinian prisoners freed in the Shalit deal constituted. In the case of Shalit he was being held by Hamas, an organization committed to destroying Israel. There was no certainty about his well-being. And there was real that if the deal in his case was not done, no one knew what might become of him. The opportunity to free him might be lost forever. And that hadn’t been the feeling in the case of Grapel.

Mullins: So the outcome of something like this, it is as you say more encouraging moment for Egyptina-Israeli relations. How far does anyone expect this could go?

Horovitz: Yeah, I think it’s a potential to a pointer to a slight warming, a tie, than obviously, to fairly serious context between high level leaders on the two sides, but I wouldn’t get carried away. It’s just a few weeks since the Israeli embassy in Cairo was stormed. Diplomats had to be evacuated, so I would stress still that the Israeli-Egyptian day-to-day reality is potentially perilous. But this is a definite positive sign.

Mullins: In closing, David, can you tell us what the after effects have been both for the Palestinians with the more than 1,000 Palestinians that were released in that Gilad Shalit case, and how Gilad Shalit himself is doing?

Horovitz: The story of Gilad Shalit remains a very, very prominent story in Israel. It almost every move is being watched with sort of empathetic interest. People hear he has gone to medical checks on one day. He’s taken a walk along the beach on another day, and he’s been meeting his friends. And so there’s extraordinary interest and extraordinary media coverage. On the Palestinian side it was a two part deal and a second batch of many hundreds of Palestinian prisoners have yet to be released. This has definitely been a boost to Hamas, which is of course validly committed to destroying Israel at the expense of Mahmoud Abbas and the relative moderate Fatah organization, which ostensibly at least is seeking accommodation alongside Israel. And that’s where Abbas has been urging Israel to release some of this direct prisoners, some Fatah prisoners, and that’s an ongoing subject of major attention and I’d imagine political debate.

Mullins: All right, thank you, David Horovitz, former editor of the Jerusalem Post. Nice to talk to you.

Horovitz: Thank you.

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