"Channel 2 television reported Sunday that an Israel Defense Forces soldier captured a year ago was being held in the southern Gaza Strip in an underground room inside a booby-trapped building.
"The television report said [Gilad] Shalit was being cared for by two captors with whom he had formed a "cordial" relationship and he was being treated fairly.
"Shalit's living quarters were described as a two-room underground store with enough supplies to last two weeks, accessible down a ladder through a 15-meter deep shaft which the report said was lined with explosives."
There are at present eight Israeli soldiers kidnapped or missing in action:
Almost a year has passed since the unprovoked abduction of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on the Israeli side of the Lebanese border, an action that precipitated widespread confrontation between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist organization. To date no word has been heard from the two captive soldiers, and neither their families nor the government of Israel have any knowledge of their whereabouts or their current state of health.
Two weeks prior to their abduction, on June 25, another soldier, Gilad Shalit, was abducted as well, this time on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza. His family, too, anxiously awaits news from him. Especially grave is the fact that these unprovoked abductions were carried out on sovereign Israeli territory.
Read the following brief bios of the three. For their sakes, and for ours.
And do absolutely not forget Zvi Feldman, Yehuda Katz, Guy Hever, Zachary Baumel and Ron Arad.
Oh, and speaking of Palestinians holding hostages, of course there's this, a video showing BBC reporter Alan Johnston, held by Palestinian militants, begging for mercy while bound in what appears to be a suicide bomber's vest.
