Don’t Be Cowed

There is, as has been pointed out, a fundamental confusion about Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip in the wake of the abduction of Corporal Gilad Shalit by the military wing of Hamas.Is the goal of these actions to free Corporal Shalit? To demonstrate that Israel will not give in to Palestinian extortion? To end Palestinian rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip? To bring down the Palestinian Authority’s Hamas government? None of this is clear at the moment to the Israeli public, and it is perhaps not quite clear to Israel’s government or army, either. Both seem to have waded into a fight with fists flying but with little idea of whom to hit – and now, the first targets of those fists having predictably fled the scene, Israel stands in the middle of it scratching its head while trying to figure out what to do next.Certainly, if the main point of what Israel is doing is to return Gilad Shalit alive to his family, it is running a great risk of failure. There are, after all, only three ways in which this might be accomplished, the third of which alone has reliably worked in the past – and yet it is precisely Way 3 that Israel is, publicly at least, refusing with much justification to consider.Way 1 is direct military action: To locate the hiding place in the Gaza Strip where Corporal Shalit is being held, to mount a commando raid on it, and to hope that this will be sudden and bold enough to catch his captors off-guard before they have a chance to kill him.The prospects of doing this are, frankly, poor. Even if Israeli intelligence manages to disclose Gilad Shalit’s whereabouts in the warren of Gaza’s crowded neighborhoods, the staging of such a raid would be problematic in the extreme. Corporal Shalit is undoubtedly being watched with great vigilance by his guards, who presumably have orders to kill him on the spot if attacked and would have to be overpowered by the raiders within a few seconds of the latter’s detection for there to be any chance of success. The last time Israel tried such a maneuver, in the case of kidnapped corporal Nachshon Wachsman in 1994, ended with Wachsman’s death.Way 2 is indirect pressure: To make life so uncomfortable for the population of the Gaza Strip, and even more so, for Hamas politicians in Gaza and the West Bank, that a Palestinian hue and cry for Corporal Shalit’s release will be generated. Faced with such a development, his imprisoners will be forced to let him go.And yet such reasoning is of highly doubtful validity. Thus far the reaction to Israel’s retaliatory measures on the part of both the Palestinian public and Hamas’s political wing has been just the opposite. Rather than condemn the kidnapers, they have increasingly lined up in support of their demands for a prisoner exchange with Israel.Moreover, even if the Palestinian street and its politicians should condemn the abduction and raise their voices on behalf of Gilad Shalit’s unconditional release, the result could be just the opposite here too. If Corporal Shalit’s captors should decide that continuing to hold him puts them in an untenable position vis-a-vis Palestinian society, they are just as likely, in order to avoid losing face, to kill him as to let him go. (The ultimatum, reportedly issued by them as I write this column, that they will execute him within 24 hours if their demands are not met, could well be – although its deadline will probably be postponed and postponed again – a preparatory step in this direction.)Which leaves Way 3: To accede to the abductors’ demands and negotiate with them the prisoner exchange they are calling for. Such negotiations have been carried out in the past by Israel with terrorist organizations like Hamas, and it would be perfectly feasible to carry them out now too. Yet they might drag on for an excruciatingly long time and the price of successfully concluding them would be extremely high.In the 1985 exchange with Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, for example, Israel swapped 1150 convicted terrorists for three of its soldiers. In the 2004 exchange with Hezbollah for kidnapped Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum, 460 Lebanese and Palestinians were let go. In both of these cases, a large number of those released returned to a life of anti-Israel violence. Gilad Shalit’s captors have publicly declared their intention of freeing similar numbers of their brethren from Israeli prisons.For Israel to give in to such demands now could have catastrophic consequences for the future. There would not be an Israeli at home or abroad who would not be the next potential victim of an abduction. The only way to reduce the price of extortion is not to pay it.Does this mean that, if Israel is to behave responsibly toward itself and its own citizens, Gilad Shalit’s life may have to be forfeit? The awful answer is: Yes. Corporal Shalit was a soldier, two of whose comrades were killed in the same action he was taken prisoner in. If their lives, like that of all combat soldiers, were considered to be riskable in the service of their country, his may have to be also.Not to be cowed by Palestinian extortion – to put an end to the rocketing of Israeli settlements – to make Hamas realize its limits: These are all legitimate aims of Israel’s current incursion into Gaza. Any one of them may have a better chance of succeeding than does freeing Gilad Shalit.Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.

Don’t Be Cowed

Don’t Be Cowed

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