Gaza – Ma’an – Israel has released a 20th Palestinian woman prisoner as promised in exchange for a short videotape proving that captured soldier Gilad Shalit is alive.

On arriving home in the Gaza Strip, former prisoner Rawda Habib urged Palestinian factions to capture more soldiers in order to exert more pressure on Israel to release Palestinians from its prisons.

Habib was released two days after the Palestinian side handed over the videotape of Shalit. Israel released an initial 19 prisoners on Friday.

Habib arrived at the Erez border crossing on Sunday at noon to find her three children, grandmother, and the rest of her family waiting for her.

After she passed through Erez crossing in a Red Cross car, Habib was taken in a Hamas vehicle, and was accompanied Osama Al-Mizyani, one of the senior officials involved in the Shalit issue.

Habib is the second female prisoner from the Gaza Strip in the video deal. She was arrested two and a half years ago at Erez crossing along with her aunt Fatima Az-Ziq who was released on Friday. Both were accused of planning to carry out a military action against Israel on behalf of the Islamic Jihad movement.

Then Habib then met de facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh at his office.

Speaking at a news conference with Haniyeh she said, “Every day they [the prisoners] spend behind the bars equals years of deprivation and hardship. Prisoners who are mothers miss their children and their families.”

For his part, Haniyeh said he felt relieved about the progress on the Shalit prisoner swap deal brokered by Egypt and Germany. “Releasing twenty female prisoners is a serious step towards completing an honorable deal securing the release of other prisoners the captors want freed.”

On Saturday Hamas leader Mahmoud Az-Zahar said that a comprehensive prisoner swap would be arranged between Israel and Palestinian factions within a matter of weeks, or months at most.

In an interview with the German Der Spiegel magazine, quoted by AFP, Az-Zahhar added that he hoped negotiations would come to a conclusion as soon as possible.

Hamas has demanded hundreds of Israel's estimated 10,000 Palestinian prisoners be freed in exchange for the soldier. A major sticking point in the proposal is Israel's insistence that dozens of these detainees be exiled to other countries rather than return to their homes.