Price Tag - 1027 Palestinian Prisoners to Be Swapped for 1 Israeli Soldier

From the archive: first published October 16, 2011.

Israel has published the list of 477 Palestinian prisoners to be released in the first stage of a swap deal for the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

The list, released on Sunday by Israel's justice ministry, includes the names of 450 Palestinian men and 27 women. Most are to return to their homes in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Some, however, are categorized for release under a "security arrangement" or to be relocated — to the Palestinian territories or "abroad" — without the list specifying where those prisoners would be deported.

The deal, brokered with Egyptian mediation, exchanges a total of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit, who had been held by Hamas since his capture in a cross-border raid in June 2006. The first stage — 477 prisoners freed in exchange for Shalit's release — was set for October 18, 2011; a second stage, freeing 550 more, was to follow by December.

The exchange was among the most lopsided prisoner deals in the region's history, and it drew sharp debate in Israel, where many of the prisoners on the list had been convicted of involvement in deadly attacks. For Hamas and the Palestinian public, the release was celebrated as a victory; for Israelis, it was an agonizing bargain — the price of bringing one soldier home alive.

Editor's note: this article was rewritten during our editorial review. The original 2011 version reproduced a wire report verbatim and broke off mid-sentence; the text above is an original summary of the reported facts.