Egyptian sources said Friday said a final decision on the Gilad Schalit deal was "yet to be made," a day before the IDF soldier marks 1,000 days in Hamas captivity and his family spends its last hours in a protest tent outside the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem.
Speaking to the London-based Al Hayat newspaper, the sources said a final decision on Schalit will be made before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert leaves office.
The sources said Israel's announcement on Tuesday was "a maneuver intended to pressure Hamas."
The Jerusalem Post could not confirm Al Hayat's report.
The Schalit family and supporters in the tent near the Prime Minister's Residence in Jerusalem intend to hold a short ceremony on Friday night, when the thousandth day of Schalit's captivity begins. A group of a few dozen teens said they would continue to man the protest tent without a time limit.
On Thursday, amid reports that Israel was considering employing pressure tactics on Hamas, including a worsening of the imprisonment conditions of Palestinian held in Israel jails, an official in the Islamic group said that "any attempt of this kind would make the kidnapped soldiers into a new Ron Arad."
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