YNet has some
interesting new details on Shalit as a hostage in Gaza:
On Sunday Yedioth Ahronoth revealed that the kidnapped soldier decided to stop eating while captive and reached a point of malnutrition that put him in a life threatening situation.
According to the report, Shalit's hunger strike advanced his release as Hamas senior officials feared for his life.
An intelligence source said that "there were those in Hamas who feared that the extreme conditions under which Shalit was being held would mean they could not offer him the help he needed and he would die on them," and so they compromised over the details of the prisoner exchange deal.
The report also reveals that Shalit was injured from shrapnel during the kidnapping which just barely missed his vital organs. The wounds eventually healed.
I found this particularly interesting:
The news of Shalit's abduction led to a flurry of activity in Israel in a bid to find out which organizations were behind the attack and a great deal of effort was invested in trying to locate the place where Shalit was being held.
At a certain point Israel believed the intelligence efforts would bear fruit. Information that reached Israel claimed that the captive soldier was being kept in a northern Gaza house surrounded by a wall. Israel exerted many efforts in trying to find out exactly what was going on in the house and was even considering the possibility of a rescue mission.
Luckily, they found out that Iran and Hamas were "feeding" the information to Israeli intelligence: The house was in fact empty and booby trapped. The scheme set up by Iran and Hamas was to lure the Israeli rescue forces into the house and then blow it up with the forces inside.
And more:
Shalit was guarded by four Hamas members who were brought in from abroad especially for the secret mission. The foreign operatives were not replaced at any time during Gilad's captivity. "The four guards basically sentenced themselves to the same conditions in which Gilad was being incarcerated," the Israeli intelligence source noted.
