JERUSALEM — The prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel that is expected to begin next week could reshape regional relationships, strengthening Egypt, Hamas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel while posing an acute challenge to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.More at the link.
One result might be a more confrontational — and Hamas-imbued — Palestinian movement that could, in the long run, increase Israel’s difficulties, drawing inspiration from and invigorating popular protests across the Middle East. It could also tighten the relationship between Hamas, Egypt and Turkey.
“Hamas has been in the shadows, and this moves it into the Palestinian forefront for now,” said Zakaria al-Qaq, a political scientist at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem.
Under the deal, announced on Tuesday, Israel will free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized in a cross-border raid by Hamas in 2006 and held ever since in Gaza.
President Shimon Peres of Israel announced that Turkey, which has angrily downgraded its relations with Israel in the last year, had played an unexpected role in helping broker the deal. Turkey is close to Hamas.
Some of the details of the Hamas-Israel deal have not been disclosed, making it hard to determine why the two sides suddenly came to agreement after failing to in past years, on what seem to have been similar terms. But the growing turmoil in the region played an important role, as did domestic politics.
I had a bad feeling about this when I first heard of the deal on Tuesday, especially that Israel was releasing 1000 prisoner, some the most hardened terrorists. Melanie Phillips has more, "A Deal With the Devil":
The dramatic news this evening that Israel and the Hamas have agreed a deal which will see the return to Israel of its kidnapped solider, Gilad Shalit, will provoke the most bitterly mixed reactions amongst Israelis and all who care about peace and justice. If Shalit is indeed returned alive and well, it will of course be a matter for rejoicing that he is unharmed after his appalling five-year ordeal and that the terrible suffering of his family is now at an end.More here.
But the price that Israel has reportedly agreed to pay for his release is itself a terrible one which will have untold consequences. For Israel will apparently release 1000 Palestinian prisoners, including 400 serving long sentences for some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the country's history.
For the Israel Defence Force, it is a moral imperative to bring home its fallen or captured soldiers. But the terrible thing is that by releasing 1000 terrorists back to Gaza and the West Bank, it makes it more likely that not just the Hamas but Hezbollah in Lebanon too will redouble their efforts to kidnap yet more Israeli soldiers in order to further this devilish barter.
So while this deal – brokered by Egypt and Germany -- redeems one Israeli soldier, it puts more Israeli soldiers at risk. Moreover, it strengthens Hamas in Gaza -- they are already boasting that this is a great victory -- makes it more likely that more Israelis will be murdered by terrorism in Israel, and demoralises those IDF soldiers who brought these 1000 terrorists to justice in the first place.
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