Captive Israeli soldier writes of ‘nightmare’

In carefully printed script, Sgt. Gilad Schalit reported deteriorating health and deep depression, and makes an anguished appeal to the Israeli government to release him from his “closed and solitary prison.”

Schalit, now 23, wrote the 14-line letter three months after gunmen affiliated with the Gaza Strip’s Islamic Hamas rulers captured him in a cross-border raid.

The existence of the letter had been known, but his parents had not published its contents.

It was leaked to the Israeli media ahead of the publication of a new book that purports through militant sources to chronicle his captivity and Israel’s unsuccessful efforts to trade him for Palestinian prisoners it holds.

Schalit’s captors have not allowed anyone to see him. Three letters and an audio tape relayed to his parents have been the only signs of life from him since he was seized. The most recent was a letter that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter passed to his parents in October 2008.

“My health is deteriorating from day to day, particularly my mental health, and this causes me much depression,” Schalit wrote in the newly revealed 2006 letter, which was carried by Israeli media outlets. “I am waiting for this intolerable and inhumane nightmare of mine to end, to be released from this lonely and closed prison.”