People across the Mideast were gearing up Monday for the emotional homecoming of more than 1,000 Palestinian inmates and one Israeli soldier, the focus of a prisoner exchange agreement set to be implemented Tuesday, dpa reported.
Under a deal agreed last week, Israel will swap 1,027 prisoners - 477 of them on Tuesday - for Gilad Shalit, who was snatched during a cross-border raid launched from the Gaza Strip on June 25, 2006. He has been held by Hamas, largely incommunicado, in the salient ever since.
Implementation of the deal will get underway between midnight (2200 GMT) and dawn Tuesday. Israel Prison Service Spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said several convoys would set out to several "points of release" as soon as the Israeli military gives the green light.
One convoy, with 27 female prisoners and 10 others would leave from the Sharon prison in central Israel to a military checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Another would set out to the checkpoint from the Ketziot prison in southern Israel.
Most, however, would be taken from there to the Israel-Egypt border crossing of Kerem Shalom, adjacent to the Gaza Strip, from where they will cross into Egypt.
The actual handover is expected to take place at around 11 am, Hamas officials told Gaza media on condition of anonymity.
Israel and the Red Cross agreed that prisoners will be allowed to cross over only once Shalit has set foot on Israeli territory at Kerem Shalom. There he will undergo an initial medical and psychological examination and be given a mobile phone so he can speak to his parents.
The physical family reunification is to take place at the Tel Nof Israel Air Force base, south-east of Tel Aviv, where Shalit is to be flown by helicopter from Kerem Shalom and where he will meet his parents.
Shalit will undergo a further medical examination at Tel Nof, and, if he his healthy, he and his family will be helicoptered to their home in Mitzpe Hila, northern Israel, where they will arrive in the late afternoon or early evening.
Preparation are no less intense on the Palestinian side.
Hamas, which administers the Gaza Strip and which concluded the mediated exchange deal deal with Israel, has erected a giant podium in western Gaza City's al-Katiba park, where it plans to bus the prisoners after they cross into the strip from Egypt.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and members of the de facto Hamas government in Gaza, leaders of other factions, relatives and tens of thousands of onlookers are expected to welcome the prisoners here.
Israel's High Court meanwhile adjourned Monday afternoon, after hearing four petitions against the release of jailed militants in exchange for Shalit.
The appeals were filed by relatives or family members of Israelis killed by militants, and an organization which represents them, arguing that the release of so many militants endangers the Israeli public.
One of the petitioners lost his parents and three siblings in the 2001 suicide bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria. Over the weekend he vandalized a memorial in Tel Aviv to slain Prime Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a protest against the deal.
Israel asked the court to dismiss the petitions, arguing that the swap was a "political matter" and was being carried out after thorough examination.
On Sunday, the court accepted a request from Shalit's parents, Noam and Aviva, to add them as respondents to the petitions. The family on Sunday urged that the appeals be turned down, saying that any delay or change to the deal could endanger it.
"Not implementing the deal will not return the murdered loved ones, but not implementing the deal will sentence Gilad to death," Noam Shalit said after the highly charged court session.
The court was to issue its decision later Monday.
A poll published Monday showed that an overwhelming number of Israelis - 79 per cent - support the agreement, compared to 14 per cent who oppose it,
According to the survey, published in the Yediot Ahranoth daily, half the respondents - exactly 50 per cent - said they feared Israel's security would be harmed by the release of so many Palestinian militants.
The poll, conducted Sunday, questioned 500 people and had a 4.5 per cent margin of error.
Most of the 477 Palestinian prisoners to be released - almost 300 - are going to Gaza. Beyond that, almost 120 are going to the West Bank, about 40 are to be expelled abroad, some 14 are to go to East Jerusalem and six are Arab Israelis returning to their homes in Israel.