Gaza: call for release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli held in Iraq

A Gaza-based Palestinian prisoners’ association has called on Iraq to facilitate an exchange deal involving 5,000 Palestinians for the release of Russian-Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov. Her abduction in Iraq, thought to be at the hands of the Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah in March, was confirmed by the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month.

According to Palestinian daily Al-Quds, the Prisoners’ Committee of the National and Islamic Forces in Gaza staged a demonstration outside the Red Cross headquarters in the Gaza Strip, along with former prisoners and representatives of Palestinian political factions and religious leaders.

Committee coordinator Zaki Dababish called Tsurkov, who served in the Israeli army during the 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a “Zionist terrorist”. He noted that she lives in the illegal Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion in the occupied West Bank, “one of the most hateful Zionist settlements, separating the north of the West Bank from the south.”

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Dababish added that the 5,000 Palestinian prisoners “gave their life and freedom for Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem, in support of Islam and the Muslim nation, and they are the first line of defence in the face of the Zionist criminal machine.”

He added that Tsurkov used to work for former Israeli Cabinet Minister Natan Sharansky, “one of the most violent of extremist Zionists.”

Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University, was kidnapped in Baghdad, where she was conducting “field research”. She has been open about her previous role in “intelligence” with the Israeli army. However, following news of her detention, a senior Israeli official was prompted to deny any affiliations with Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

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