Israel freed 19 Palestinian women prisoners Friday in a swap for footage showing soldier Gilad Shalit looking healthy after more than three years in captivity at the hands of Gaza militants. “Gilad appeared in good health and this reinforces our responsibility to bring him home,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Shalit family in a telephone call. Israeli media said the video, which lasts two minutes and 40 seconds, shows a healthy-looking, clean-shaven Shalit speaking coherently to the camera and holding up a copy of a Gaza newspaper dated September 14. The footage was expected to be made public later Friday. The Shalit family saw the video after military chief-of-staff Gabi Ashkenazi assessed it and gave the green light for the prisoner release, officials said. In the West Bank, friends, relatives and officials cheered and wept as the released Palestinian women passed a checkpoint on their way to a ceremony hosted by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah. Eighteen of the women were taken to the West Bank, one to the Gaza Strip and another will be freed in the coming days. “To exchange one minute of Gilad Shalit for 20 ladies is a big victory,” said Qiffah Afanah, who served nine months for assaulting a soldier. She cried with joy as she hugged her father at the Ofer checkpoint where relatives, friends and officials cheered their homecoming. In the Gaza Strip, Fatima Al-Zaq stood stony-faced at a welcome ceremony hosted by the Hamas rulers of the Palestinian territory, holding her son Yusuf who was born while she was behind bars in Israel. “Thank God and Hamas,” she told the crowd, adding: “The joy will not be complete without the release of all the prisoners, especially the women.”
