JERUSALEM ? Israelis overwhelmingly support a lopsided prisoner swap in which 1,027 Palestinian prisoners will be released for a single captured soldier, a poll showed Monday, one day before the exchange between Israel and Hamas was slated to take place.
The poll showed that 79 percent of Israelis support the deal under which the soldier, tank crewman Sgt. Gilad Schalit, will be released by the Hamas militants who have held him in Gaza for more than five years.
Only 14 percent said they opposed the deal.
The poll was carried out by the Dahaf Institute and published in the daily Yediot Ahronot on Monday. Pollsters interviewed 500 respondents, and the margin of error was 4.4 percentage points.
The level of support is striking, not only because of the uneven nature of the exchange but among those to be freed in return for the soldier are Palestinian militants responsible for some of the deadliest attacks against Israelis in recent memory.
The prisoners to be released include Ahlam Tamimi, a woman who drove a suicide bomber to a crowded Jerusalem pizzeria in 2001. He killed 15 people, including seven children and teenagers.
Also on the list are Abdel Aziz Salha, who was photographed raising his bloody hands to a cheering crowd after killing two Israeli soldiers who accidentally drove into the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2000; Nasser Yateima, a mastermind of a hotel bombing that killed 30 people celebrating the Passover holiday in 2002; and Ibrahim Younis, who planned a 2003 suicide bombing in a Jerusalem cafe that killed seven people, including an American-born doctor and his daughter who were celebrating on the eve of the young woman's wedding.
Several families of victims have filed court appeals against the prisoner swap, and Israel's Supreme Court was set to hold a hearing on them Monday. The court was not expected to accept the appeals, however, or delay the implementation of the swap.
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