A late posting about Gil'ad Shalit

I realize I'm posting this segment a bit late.  While most of what's written below is water under the bridge by now, I still decided to post it not only to explain to folks the issue in general and my take on it in specific, but also to make us all think about this; to show that some of the points presented in this writing may still be relevant to all of us in times to come.

Who is Gil'ad Shalit?
He's the lone Israeli prisoner released last week in exchange for 1027 Palestinian prisoners.

What's with the '? 
The way is first name pronounced, is similar to Liam's (who's correct pronunciation is Lee-um).  It's Gil-ad.  And the A is an English A, not an American one.  It an Ah sound, not an Ae.

Alright, did we get all the technicalities out of the way?  Can the discussion start?  Let's go.  Before I start explaining my take on this prisoner exchange, I need to give some background. 

In Israel the issue of POW's as well as MIA's is an emotionally charged one.  It's difficult to explain it to a non-Israeli audience. At a time like this the entire country feels like one big family - for the good and the bad.  Everybody really feels for the missing guys and their families.   And everybody gets involved in the conversation.  I mean everybody.  While on the one hand the entire country genuinely cares and wants to see the loved one back, there are too many who were impacted by terrorist attacks - either directly or indirectly. 

To demonstrate this to the American reader, lets complicate things a bit.  Imagine a really close relative of yours - a brother, sister, mom, dad, cousin, etc. - was murdered in that Virgina Tech massacre. Now imagine that the murderer was captured alive. 

This is a critical point at this imaginary story:  Do you feel the loss?  Do you feel the pain?  Do you feel anger at the murderer?  Do you want revenge?  You've got to get emotionally involved in this little story.  If you don't, read the above again and again and again until you have strong emotions against him.  You want to kill the son of a bitch with your own hands.

Are you back?  Do you hate him yet?  The murderer, it turns out, is a member of a well known mob family.  The police has many more criminals from that "family" sitting behind bars. The criminals, wanting their guys back, kidnap a policeman, who happened to live in your neighborhood.  You've seen his family here and there and heard about them, your kids go to the same school.  The policeman kept hostage for years.  Nobody heard from him, but he's assumed to be alive.  Meanwhile, everybody cares for his family.  You see his wife with two young kids all the time.  But, why should you care?  You have your own grief to cope with and it grabs you and wraps you whether you want it or not.  But really, do you not care for them?  A wife and two young ones who might never see their dad again.

The times comes and the the governor reaches a deal with the criminals for a prisoner exchange.  The murderer of your loved one is included.  He's about to walk free.  You can't stand this thought, but at the same time you care a lot for the policeman and his family.  Now, are you for or against such a deal?  You're not only emotionally involved, but your own heart is torn apart.

Alright, you can stop imagining now.  Back to reality.

So there all these emotions running high for hundreds of victims' families.  These families want justice, revenge, closure.  They don't want to see the killers of their loved ones walk free again - ever.  At the same time, they cared for Gil'ad Shalit and his family.  (If none of the above is enough of a mess, there's the security situation of setting hundreds of murderers free.  Most if not all of them pledged to go back to fighting Israel as soon as they set free.  Now how's that as an incentive to free them?)

Alright, was that enough for a background?  Let's start attacking the real issue now.  At the core of the issues are two questions:
- Are you for or against such swap?  (I was a 100% for it.)
- Isn't the price of 1027 Palestinian prisoners too high?  (My answer, "no".)

Now for the longer explanation:

• While I recognize the danger of setting them all free, I'm also a big proponent of forgiveness and reconciliation - not so much because I'm a leftist tree hugger, but because I recognize the opportunity for a truce, an agreement of some sort.  Let's ask the same question in reverse:  If all these prisoners remain behind bars, does it give Israel a better chance to reach truce with the Hamas?  I don't think so.

Slightly related (on the subject of reconciliation), I already wrote in an earlier post about Rwanda.  Forgiveness can lead to peace.  I don't think that the opposite is true.

Still on the same issue, I cannot put myself in the place of a family member of a victim of a terrorist attack.  I never lost any relative in such way.  If I was a relative of such victim I most likely would hate seeing the murderers of my loved one walking free, signaling a V-sign and smiling to the camera.  But let me ask those families:  Do you want to keep these guys in prison for the sake of security or in the name of punishment and revenge?  And I'll add another question for the families:  What would bring you a peace of mind, to see the murderers rot in prison or to share a pita bread and a dish with THEIR families?  (While these two options don't necessarily stand one against the other, I hope that the idea is clear.  Should I spell it out?  Nah, there's the World Series on the TV, let's not get carried away....)

So that pretty much does it for the emotional aspect.  Now let's examine the actual deal.

• What would Israel gain from holding all these prisoners?  Not much, if any.
• Yes, but how do you free 1027 murderers?  As explained widely in the media, "only" 400-something of them were involved in terrorist activities.  The other half are mostly small criminals who got caught within Israel or those who tried to work illegally in Israel (in order to support their families in the Gaza Strip).
• What is the risk in freeing them?
• Throughout its 60-something years, Israel always exchanged large numbers of Arab POW's to get just a few Israeli soldiers in return.  So this exchange is really nothing new.
• Previous swaps did not change the outcome of the conflict either way.  They made absolutely no difference.  (Many would argue here that the Jibril Agreement was a direct cause for the Intifada.  It is my opinion that the Intifada would have erupted either way, since the occupation in the territories really choked the Palestinian population.  It was really called for.  On a personal note, around the same time of the deal, i.e., BEFORE the released prisoners had time to organize any Intifada, I took a horseback riding trip in the occupied territories.  Remember, there was no hostilities against Israelis back then.  As we rode through one of the towns, a mob gathered and started following us, yelling, cursing, some even picked up rocks.  We reached for our guns.  It was a most unpleasant, scary event.  The point in telling this story is to demonstrate that the Intifada was brewing with or without the Jibril deal.)
• The biggest risk in freeing such big number of prisoners, to my opinion, is their impact on the power struggle in the Gaza Strip.  Without them, the Fatah stands a chance, a small one, to change things around.  With them, it's a Hamas game.  But, Israel cannot and should not make the calculation outside of its borders.  There's so much you can control.
  
• When Hamas took control they vowed to never recognize Israel and to never negotiate with it.  Well, guess what?  Not only they negotiated with Israel now for several years, but they actually reached and agreement with Israel.  "That's nonsense", would say opponents, "Israel always made swap deals with its enemies".  True, and it's also true that Israel made peace with its worse enemy ever (Egypt) and with Jordan.  By negotiating with Israel, Hamas sort of recognized it, whether they like it or not.  A crack was opened in the dam of resistance.  Maybe I'm too optimistic, but from my years as a water & soil engineer I remember that it's nearly impossible to seal a dam once it was cracked - if you know what I mean.  Hamas found avenues to talk with Israel, like it or not.
• Every deal has a price to pay.  Period.
• What about the pledges by the newly released Palestinians to kidnap more Israeli soldiers, continue the hostility?  Yeah, that's still a war.  The swap did not change anything for the better, but neither did it change it for the worse.  In other words, these are just boasting - nothing more.  I'm not claiming that all these guys would now be good boys.  Not at all.  But, they are likely to obey either Hamas or Fatah and it's unlikely that such authorities would allow them to carry hostile activities in the near future.
• Let's play a little scenario game.
• First, lets assume there will never be any settlement between Hamas and Israel.  In that case, see all the above elaborate explanation.  In short, Israel will gain nothing by keeping these prisoners locked behind bars for the next 30 years.  On the flip side, if Gil`ad Shalit was to stay imprisoned for ever or even die in captivity, the Israeli army would have looked really bad.
• In the second scenario lets assume that some settlement would be reached with Hamas (as I believe) within 5, 10, 15 year.  In this case, surely there would be a prisoner swap at some point.  Well, why wait?  Why not release everybody now?
• A few very prominent Israelis that opposed the deal said something like "soldiers have to protect citizens, not the other way around".  This just nonsense.  First of all, it's well known that in Israel the citizens are the army and the army is the citizens.  Secondly and much more relevant, when Shalit was a soldier, he protected citizens.  But how can he protect citizens by sitting in captivity?  His release (that is, the swap) presents no existential risk to Israel.  Which reminds me:  Some in Israel still live under the impression that Israel is under an existential threat.  They keep forgetting that  a few hundred prisoners who're released into a region where they barely has enough to eat can hardly be any threat to the strongest country in the region.  Common, get out of your trauma, people.
• "The difference", some would say, "is that Israel released cold murderers with blood on their hands while Gil`ad Shalit was not involved with any such activity".  Of course, the other side doesn't see it that way.  The Hamas are freedom fighters, in their eyes; the Palestinians are fighting for recognition and independence; Israel is the occupier.  So it's all a point of view (not to mention that Shalit's tank was guarding the Gaza Strip when he was kidnapped.  In other words, he was actively being involved in oppressing them - again, in their view).  Plus, Israelis forget that only 60-70 years ago they fought the British just the same and for the same goal. 

With these words, I'm of course not justifying killing of innocent citizens (on either side), but I can see how an population that is oppressed over years and years and years, with a huge unemployment, no medical or humanitarian services, etc., etc. - well, I can see how such population tries everything to get out of THAT prison.  And since oppressing this population is not working for years now, maybe Israel needs to think about changing its thinking?  
 
That's pretty much it.  Remember two things:
1.  I'm not any authority.  I'm just a private citizen expressing my opinion.  I'm sure that those who conducted the negotiation and those who made the final decision had other things to consider, some of which I'm unaware of.
2.  While I'm an Israeli citizen and served in the army and fought the same (or similar) enemies, I don't reside in Israel today.  That also means I'm removed from the everyday street-level public opinion, to a great extent.

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Finally, on the same subject, something completely personal.  When No`am, Gil`ad's dad, spoke after he had his son back, he said something like "we just got a new son, all over again".  Even though there's a world of differences, we felt very much the same after we reunited with Liam after her many surgeries - and especially her very first surgery, the one which lasted 16 hours and in which she was actually given new life.  I'm not, of course, comparing Gil`ad's POW situation with us.  But when we handed Liam to the OR staff, we really didn't know if we see her back, or when, or in what condition she'd be.  So when the doc came out exhausted and sweaty and said "everything will be fine" (or whatever he said, because it wasn't always "fine"), we felt just like Gil`ad's dad felt:  that we got a new daughter, all over again.