Khaled Meshaal, the exiled political leader of Hamas, has said Israel must release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier. Meshaal, who has survived an Israeli assassination attempt, was speaking at a rare news conference in Damascus on Monday. "Our people ... are united on the insistence to swap the captured soldier with prisoners in the jails of the Zionist enemy," Meshaal said. Israel has said it will not negotiate with the governing Hamas movement for the release of the soldier, captured in a cross-border raid into Israel on June 25. "We have told mediators and those who made political efforts [to end the issue] that we support the peaceful, calm handling of this matter but you need to understand the needs of the Palestinian people," Meshaal said. Meshaal reprimanded other countries for focusing on the Israeli soldier, rather than on pressing Israel to halt its assault on the Gaza Strip. The groups that seized the 19-year-old soldier have called for Israel to free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said on Monday: "Khaled Meshaal is a terrorist with blood on his hands and he is not a legitimate partner. I will not negotiate with Hamas." Olmert also reaffirmed his commitment to redraw the Jewish settlement map in the occupied West Bank unilaterally in the absence of peace talks with the Palestinians, but acknowledged that "this will be difficult".