The final piece

Amos Harel wrote Prisoner swap is capitulation to blackmail by terrorists. Judging by the title alone it would seem that it’s a critique of the government’s decision to trade Samir Kuntar and other terrorists for Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. It starts:

At bottom, it was another painful lesson in the limits of power. The same government that on July 12, 2006 embarked, without fully thinking it through, on a war in which it vowed to bring back the hostages (three ministers have since quit; five joined) on Sunday voted with a heavy heart for the deal that will finally put the war Second Lebanon War to rest. We cannot overlook the gap between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s declaration, a few hours after the abduction (“We will not give in to blackmail and will not negotiate with terrorists when it comes to the lives of Israel Defense Forces soldiers”) and the deal with Hezbollah approved on Sunday. Much ground has been covered from the early arrogant pronouncements to the current hard reality.

The truth needs to be said: Israel did indeed capitulate to blackmail by a terror organization, after conducting lengthy negotiations with it. It is releasing five live prisoners, in return for (almost certainly) the bodies of the soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

But Harel isn’t criticizing the deal:

But we should also admit that this is what Israel has always done, under similar circumstances. When hostages could not be freed by force, negotiations were held and concessions made, in many previous deals. Moreover, the price this time is lower than we paid in the past.

The price is perhaps lower in that Israel isn’t releasing as many terrorists as in the past, but there’s this:

The deal secured by the government’s coordinator of hostage talks, Ofer Dekel, appears to be the most reasonable deal one could be obtained under the present circumstances. Hezbollah would not sign a deal that did not include murderer Samir Kuntar’s release. Despite last week’s embarrassing events, a deal was finally approved.

This is what’s troubling. Hezbollah had a red line. Kuntar or not deal. Israel had no such principles. For Israel getting the deal done was essential regardless of the cost. Elder of Ziyon writes why this is problematic:

I cannot imagine the pain that the Regev and Goldwasser families have been going through, but giving Hezbollah their stated prize – in which they give up nothing that is of any value to themselves – is doing nothing less than giving them total retroactive victory in the Lebanon war,
by their own stated goals. We know by now that the UN forces in Lebanon are not enforcing their own mandate and that Hezbollah has more than recouped their losses from 2006, and now Israel is doing nothing less than conceding defeat.

The sickening piece of filth called Samir Kuntar was the only thing that stopped Hezbollah from being able to declare total victory. Now, victory is theirs.

Given that Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran, currently the main menace in the region Israel’s handing both a political and propaganda to Hezbollah makes the swap an even worse deal earlier ones.

UPDATE: JudeoPundit notes that Iran is crowing too. And Noah Pollak adds that this hurts Lebanon:

The prisoner deal is terrible for the Lebanese government. In the years since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, and accelerating in the wake of the events in Lebanon of May 2008, Hezbollah has experienced a significant weakening of its popularity in Lebanon, especially among non-Shia. Having waged a short-duration war against Lebanon — something Nasrallah promised the “resistance” would never, ever do — Hezbollah is increasingly being viewed not just as an Iranian militia antagonistic to Lebanon’s interests, but one which threatens to drag the country back to civil war. The recent talk of handing the Shaba Farms to the Lebanese government was met with hysterics by Hezbollah, which feared that its last remaining excuse for keeping its arms was being removed (which was exactly the point).

By making a deal with Nasrallah, Israel threw a lifeline to Hezbollah; allowed Nasrallah to claim once again the salience of his militia; and, in agreeing to the inclusion of Palestinians, allowed Nasrallah to once again position Hezbollah across the Shia-Sunni divide, which, of course, is a primary Iranian objective (the Iranians do this on their own, for example, by sponsoring Hamas and Islamic Jihad).

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.