Gilad Shalit
Kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit’s homecoming to Israel is being celebrated almost in every Israeli home and family. Five years of captivity has come to an end. The release of Palestinian terrorists — many of them responsible for the most outrageous atrocities — is also being celebrated all over Palestine and in most of the Arab world.
As almost always, there is “good news” and “bad news.”
The good news extends beyond the important humanitarian relief. The prisoner exchange makes it possible to stabilize the non-official cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas leadership, which governs the Gaza Strip.
The bad news is that the Hamas is rewarded for a criminal act of aggression: Shalit was kidnapped from Israeli sovereign territory and kept in captivity against all rules of the Geneva Convention and of international law. There is also no guarantee that the released prisoners, some of whom were convicted of murder, won’t return to their violent ways and attack Israel again. The message that has been perceived in Palestine and the Arab world is that aggression pays.
To make matters worse, the legal Palestinian government in the West Bank — led by President Abbas, who is committed to negotiations and to nonviolence — is seen publicly as the great losers because of Hamas’ leadership role in the prisoner release.
Compounding matters, the U.S. Congress and Senate earlier this month decided to block nearly $200 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority, defunding first and foremost the humanitarian and economic efforts of USAID in this region. The defunding would not only be detrimental to U.S. influence, but, even worse, would be perceived as another encouragement to Hamas, which is funded by militant radical state and non-state actors in the Middle East. Crippling the Palestinian Authority only enhances Hamas’ grip and influence on the Palestinian population — which otherwise might support the moderate and pragmatic Palestinian leadership of President Abbas.
What can and should be done?
First, there is the immediate need to reassure the Palestinian Authority of continued funding and to support moderate and pragmatic Palestinian leadership.
Second, we must stop rewarding blackmail and crime with prisoner releases. Several years ago, I was part of a team of Israelis and Palestinians who developed a more balanced plan for prisoner release. Under this proposal, the government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority would negotiate and conclude a general prisoner release concept. Prisoners would be released on the basis of an agreed schedule, as long as no acts of violence would be committed. Any terror act would bring about a stop to the prisoner release, until the perpetrators would be brought to court and effective action against further violence would be taken. There are an estimated 5,500 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel; about 1,000 have been directly responsible for murder. Those 1,000 would be excluded from the deal.
The Quartet powers (the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations) want the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority return to negotiations. I believe the item of a general prisoner release should be put on the top of the agenda because an agreement on these issues could be concluded shortly. Such a development would create the necessary political context to allow the negotiations on all outstanding issues of conflict to get underway.
Yair Hirschfeld, Ph.D., is the Isaac and Mildred Brochstein Fellow in Middle East Peace and Security in Honor of Yitzhak Rabin at the Baker Institute. Hirschfeld is currently teaching at the University of Haifa in the Department of Middle Eastern History. Under the auspices of the institute’s Conflict Resolution Program, Hirschfeld participates in the Baker Institute’s Israeli-Palestinian Working Group, both at the institute and in the Middle East.