Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations

    GAZA, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Tens of Islamic Jihad movement supporters in the Gaza Strip Wednesday went to the streets and handed out sweets to bystanders to express their happiness over an ongoing Israel-Hezbollah prisoner swap.

    The celebrators gathered on a main street in the Gaza city, carrying posters of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar and some of the dead Palestinians whose bodies were handed over to Hezbollah.

    Naffez Azzam, an Islamic Jihad leader, said his movement will receive the bodies of the Palestinians from Hezbollah later.

    Under the prisoner swap deal which is still underway, Israel releases five Lebanese prisoners and 199 bodies of Lebanese, Palestinians and Arab fighters who were held in Israeli special military graveyards. In return, Hezbollah hands over the remains of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah in 2006.

    Azzam said the swap may have not met the hopes of the Palestinians, as they have more than 11,000 prisoners in Israeli jails, but it is still a big achievement for the Palestinian and the Lebanese resistance, and Israel "experiences a state of servility."

    Azzam also said the Palestinian captors of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit "must learn" from the swap between Israel and Hezbollah.

    Hamas holds the Israeli corporal in Gaza since June 2006 and demands to exchange him for some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

    However, Hamas announced earlier in the day it halted the Egyptian-mediated talks on Shalit because Israel did not commit itself to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire reached last month.