It's been reported that Israel is considering a prisoner swap to get back captured soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured by militant Palestinians last year. Egypt is brokering a deal between the Israeli government and Hamas, that may include the release of 450 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel.
One of the Palestinians who may be included in the release is Marwan Barghouti, a important political figure and bomb maker convicted of assisting in a rash of suicide bombings in 2001 and 2002.
The Jerusalem Post has a rundown of six of the top terrorists on the release list.
Prisoner swaps like this inevitably cause much more harm than good. Aside from the outright imbalance inherent in swapping 450 mostly dangerous individuals for one soldier, these situations make a clear cut case for the dangers of encouragement that go along with negotiating with terrorists. It is only reasonable to expect the militants to take more prisoners in order to facilitate more swaps. Who could blame them? They'd be stupid not to.
Americans have the Iran-Contra affair to look at. Despite some success in getting Hezbollah to release hostages, more were taken in their place. And Israel has its own long, sad history of botched prisoner swaps to look to.
Nonetheless an ineffective, beleaguered Olmert government seems to be making the same old mistakes and creating more problems:
1. Getting one soldier back to his family, yes, but at the same time making other Israeli patrols more attractive targets for cross-border raids.
2. Legitimizing a Hamas government that continues to refuse recognition of Israel, has taken no real steps to control terrorism in the Palestininan territories, and at the very least tolerated the hostage taken while, more likely, helped facilitate them.
3. Releasing a number of dangerous militants back into Gaza where they are more free to create terror plots against Israel than they were before the 2005 pullout.
Hopefully Olmert hasn't reached the point of political desperation where he's willing to try anything. He ought to listen to the concerns of the analysts and terror victims' family members who have enough hindsight to recognize a bad deal when they see one.
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