Lessons from Terrorism Negotiations and the Deal for Gilad Schalit
What is so troubling about the deal for Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit and Israel’s other lopsided trades is the message it sends to the terrorists. Israel will trade a thousand for one. All the terrorists have to do to rescue their murderers is to kidnap an Israeli and strike a deal. Hamas, in its welcoming statements to its returning murderers, exhorted its fighters to kidnap Israelis.
The deal enabled the Palestinians to lionize and show compassion for the released murderers. Amnesty International found moral equivalence between an abducted soldier and people incarcerated because they had blood on their hands. The exchange provided Hamas with a major propaganda victory, especially over the competing Fatah, for whose members it also negotiated releases.
Wafa al-Biss, who wanted to blow up an Israeli hospital unit that had been giving her free medical care, met in her home in North Gaza with school children who came to celebrate her freedom. She urged them to follow in her footsteps and become martyrs. At the conclusion of the meeting, the children sang nationalistic songs and of their desire to give their souls and blood for Palestine.
In Lebanon, Samir Kuntar, who killed four-year-old Einat Haran by smashing her head against a rock with his rifle butt, called for kidnapping more Israelis. Over the protests of Einat’s mother, whose husband was also killed in the attack, Kuntar was released in 2008 as part of an exchange for the bodies of three Israelis. In Lebanon, Kuntar is celebrated as a national hero, and the murderous Syrian dictator Bashir Assad, who is now shooting his own people in the streets, awarded Kuntar a medal.
The Schalit deal, as the one in 2008, says to the terrorists, if you are incarcerated in Israel, it is only a matter of time before you can be rescued. We have a visible route for you to freedom. Even if you kill a four year old with your own hands, we can deal for your release.
All the Schalit deal will produce is more terrorists, more victims, and more families burying loved ones. These are now nameless and faceless people, but in the months to come these victims will have to be enumerated as part of the calculus of this decision.
Israel is a country in the Middle East, not in Western Europe. Israel should understand with whom and what it is dealing. Clearly, it doesn’t or it wouldn’t reward a culture that celebrates as a hero a man who killed a four-year-old girl with the butt of his rifle — a culture that equates the return of the murderers of innocents with the return of a soldier.
Israel needs to flip it around the next time. When they capture another Israeli, Israel has 2 options that put more pressure on the Palestinians. (1) Israel should capture Palestinians in raids on Gaza. They should capture them randomly and then keep them in a big pit in the desert. Then they can tell Hamas, “We have 1000 (or whatever number) of your people to trade. We are keeping them in an unstable 100 foot deep sandpit. If the pit collapses before you trade them, they will all die. If you won’t trade them, we will capture another 100 every day until you do.” (2) When they capture an Israeli, Israel should start napalming Gaza until the hostage is returned.
I’m sure either policy will achieve quicker results than the present one.
You’ve said it all and said it for me.
A century ago General John Jack Pershing was attributed to a legend involving Moro terrorists who proliferated as America replaced Spain as the colonial power inheriting the dread of the Moro that drained the patience of the outgoing Spanish.
The omnipresent pig was Pershing’s trump card in dealing with terrorist attacks of the Moro. Legend has it that the pragmatic General rounded up and gunned down 49 out of 50 Moro upstarts. He then threw the bodies into an open grave, covered them with pig entrails before burying them. The bullets used in the execution were dipped in pig blood for good measure and the single terrorist he kept alive was made to watch aghast the whole spectacle.
The poor fellow was purposefully set free to relay to fellow members the General’s wicked execution convention and strangely enough, the Moro penchant for kidnapping and terrorizing the Filipino population ceased the next half-century.
A cold fact that emanates from the legend is that Islamic terrorism, active before Pershing’s tenure was relatively dormant for a good part of the 20th century during his appointment.
#1 wouldn’t work because neither the PA or Hamas care about their people and neither do other Arab countries.
The citizens are simply pawns and the more the world sees them suffer the better because it keeps the money coming in.
Michael
That’s humane and not a violation of international law.
It is a big mistake to take and hold terrorists as prisoners. First of all, they are not ordinary criminals, nor are they foreign POWs who must be protected under Geneva Convention rules. They are illegal combatants, spies, and saboteurs who wear no uniform and who are entitled to no protection under any law.
Once they are in prison, their imprisonment becomes an incentive to take and abuse more American or Israeli hostages as bargaining chips to force the release of the terrorists.
Israel needs to go out and hunt those released prisoners down and kill them, and to proclaim that no more prisoners will be taken alive.
IT is the current US policy.
First of all, I’m sorry to say that I agree with all that’s been said. Maybe apart from killing people without a trial.
Israel have stepped over the talk-to-terrorists line, and I’m afraid it can’t go back. One reason for that poor deal is the media pressure. It’s not as if there was some debate. Most of the main stream media was supported that deal. One newspaper, Maariv, the 3rd largest in the country, even made its own campaign.
That lead to public pressure. People in Israel were made to believe that everything should be paid for Shalit.
The reason for the MSM was not so much for that soldier, but against prime minister Netanyahu. They didn’t care about future deals, or about the future in general. Only here and now were important.
Netanyahu gave way, I think, because politicians have no real contact with everyday life other then by the media. And if all the media play the same tune, then the pressure works.
Besides, Shalit wasn’t the first. In the 1980s, several hundreds terrorists were released in exchange for some 10 soldiers. The result of this deal, now know as the Jibril Deal, was the terror attack, aka First Intifada.
Then there was Tannenbaum, who tried to make a drug deal, probably, and was release by Hizbullah for several hundreds. Next, two Israeli soldiers were killed in an attack the lead to the 2nd Lebanon war. Their *bodies* were returned for the release of several hundreds.
The result, in my opinion, is that the next Israeli to be kidnapped will be for a bigger deal.
Unless something smart will happen.
When considering the deals made with Livni in attendance (Tannenbaum and Israeli soldiers were killed in an attack – it seems that the country was kept in the dark and thought that they were still alive) internal politics was the name of the game.
While I agree with most of the sentiments expressed, the idea that Netanyahu isn’t in touch is just wrong. His own brother was killed by Palestinian terrorists as he led the otherwise successful rescue at Entebbe.
You write Israel is a country in the Middle East, not in Western Europe. Israel should understand with whom and what it is dealing.
but should realise that while it does understand, unfortunately that is not the case of the US or Europe who hold the big stick.
It is very easy to use the threat of letting the UNSC loose on Israel, which no doubt would lead to International sanctions, for the Israelis to tow the line – sort of.
One only has to look at the recent past to see the egregiously destructive political pressure applied to Israel to realise that it does not have the freedom to behave as Russia does.
Indeed. People talk as if we were some kind of a superpower or at least judged by the same standards as other countries. No. In our case even our unilateral withdrawal from Gaza was demonized on Western campuses as a part of some complicated plot to commit genocide. Our security fence which is very effective in keeping terrorists out of Israel is demonized as “apartheid” “Nazi” “racist” “wall”. Any sanctions on Gaza are demonized as starving people to death though no one can name one person who was starved to death. And of course any military action is a massacre and a genocide. Which is odd because if you look at the number of casualties ON BOTH SIDES since 1948 until now – that’s 63 years, several major wars, decades of low-intensity conflict, and many thousands of terrorist attacks, rockets and missiles – then the number of casualties ON BOTH SIDES in 63 years is about half the number of Arab casualties in the Iraq war. The number of casualties in 63 years is far lower than the number of casualties in any single major war that was Arab on Arab or Muslim on Muslim, whether an inter-national war or a civil war. So if we’re trying to commit genocide we’re the lamest ever at it. There are even people from Gaza and Judea & Samaria who get fertility treatments in Israel, as if the Gazan birth rate isn’t about the highest in the world without Israeli medical intervention. Some genocide. But don’t let the facts confuse the haters and their governments.
Americans here speak as if Israel was America. The US doesn’t depend on foreign supply of weapons. Arms embargo by Uncle Sam won’t be a death sentence for the US since the US IS Uncle Sam. And no entire continents will boycott American products like Europe, our major export market, is threatening to do to us. Israel is a tiny country with 7.5 million people and limited power and resources. The US and Europe do carry big sticks and threathen to use them against us. They had no effect on the Shalit deal – that was our decision alone. But we’re constantly heavily pressured to submit to terrorists’ demands on far more crucial issues with far deadlier consequnces, in spite of their outspoken and amply demonstrated death wish for us. And in spite of knowing that not only the Arabs’ word isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, but we can’t trust security guarantees made by the US, Europe and the UN either. Didn’t they commit to disarm Hizballah after our withdrawal from Lebanon? Well, Hizballah is better armed than ever and they never did anything about it, it now controls Lebanon. And UN vehicles – whether fake, stolen or “donated” – are used to transport weapons and terrorists and to try and lure Israelis into ambushes. That’s what the UN is good for. The Western word is about as trustworthy as the Arab word. But we’re demanded to submit and continue to submit with our eyes wide open.
It’s even worse under Obama. Not just his treatment of Israel and other traditional US allies, but also American credibility. He went back on promises made to us by the previous administration, just like Arab dictators don’t feel obligated by agreements signed and commitments made by the former dictator they executed. Then he went back on promises made to us by his own administration. He went back on promises made to Poland before his term. He gave the Russians sensitive information about the British nuclear arsenal. And so on and so forth. Yet he stands a chance to get reelected since the media is behind him. If he gets 4 more years I wonder if we’d recognize the world when he’s done with it. I wonder if we’d recognize the USA.
The base problem seems to be that there is no status that applies to the terrorists-militants-asymmetrical fighters of today’s conflicts. They are neither Prisoners of War with certain defined rights who can expect release at end of hostilities regardless of who or how many they killed nor convicted criminals with different defined rights who in most cases can expect release at end of sentence or earlier if entitled, barring those with genuine life sentences. This is exactly the predicament of Guantanamo. Shalit is a third category. He truly fits the description ‘hostage’.
One would have thought that constitutional lawyer Obama would have given this attention but apparently not. As nothing will come from the UN and the Red Cross is as entangled in politics as the UN only the USA is sufficiently influential to do something about this. When it stops leading from behind the hostage negotiator predicament so ably described by Prof. Miller will be made easier for all countries.
In WWII Stalin’s son was taken prisoner. No Deal for his release was made. Gilad is my distant cousin. I would NOT have made this deal.
Dr. Shalit
One thing I noticed is that some of those released had been in prison for ten years or more. So according to the wimpy European Union standards they had already served a maximum amount of time for their crimes. I know Israel is reluctant to use a death penalty, but I’ve reached a point at which I think it’s actually needed.
Never negotiate with terrorists. Doing so rewards terrorism. Never negotiate.
Greetings:
Back in my high school, basketball-playing days, our coach had two favorite mantras that he inflicted on us with regularity. The first was “you have 32 minutes (referring to the game’s four 8-minute quarters) to figure these people out”; the second was “our opposition determines our tactics”. Several years later, during my all-expense-paid tour of sunny Southeast Asia, I realized that my two greatest fears were being captured by our enemy or having one of my infantrymen captured. Death and dying, I felt somewhat prepared for. The total loss of control involved in being captured or my responsibility to any captured subordinate was beyond my psychology’s ability to handle. Fortunately, I didn’t have to deal with either situation.
The problem is one of culture. The Western, Judeo-Christian world has become entranced by the if not “make love, not war” ideology, certainly the “make love or make ‘nice’ war” one. That it can so cling to the “rules of war” when its enemies show no inclination in that regard would be upsetting to my former coach. And, needless to say, Israel has long had plenty of time to figure those “people” out.
During my infantry days, part of the folk wisdom was what was referred to as “the nine-cent solution”. The “nine-cent” was thought to be the price of an M-16 bullet. The problem to be solved was what to do with any enemy prisoners taken. While what to do with a POW may seem to be a simple problem for those far removed, the reality has many more implications. While some POWs may have useful and extractable information most don’t. Likewise, the relocation, detention, and maintenance of POWs have real and substantial costs and risks which need to be considered early and often.
The lesson of Gilad Shalit for me is war is war; it’s not crime. Treating those who participate in “asymmetric” warfare as criminals is less than thoughtful. The participation in it, and the incumbent disregard for the “Judeo-Christian” “rules of war”, should expose those perpetrators to military justice, including the death penalty. Those who willfully attack civilians, and those who aid, abet, or conspire with them should suffer more than some temporary loss of freedom. Death is what they say they crave. Let their wishes be fulfilled.
When it comes to the crux of the Middle East drama, there is no “solution”, because the situation is not a “problem” in the first place: We easily forget what a problem is: It is only a hypothetical contrivance purposefully made up by a teacher, to test whether a recent point was understood by the students. But these swaps are real, unfortunately, and none their consequences exist in some hypothetical realm, anymore than the swaps themselves.
But we continue to pretend that there would be some “solution”, but none of the logical remedies (the “correct” answers of an earnest student) have anything to do with reality. For instance, what do you suppose would happen if Israel was reneging on its commitment against the death penalty, and therefore could theoretically cease to keep in jail people who truly deserve worse? Would the UN welcome such a move? Of course not! There would be yet another world-wide tsunami of condemnation of Israel. So, this “solution” is not available, not any more than any of its logical alternatives. Bottom line: the situation is not going to be resolved in the foreseeable future.
Israel, the only country in the neighborhood where the criminals are treated with any human consideration, will continue to be the recipient of general opprobrium, and the “soldiers” of the Palestinian cause will continue to be excused for murdering the innocents. It’s all upside down, like it has already been for a long time, and even the POTUS himself, in the professorial mannerism of a Harvard graduate cum Peace Nobel Prize, made it worse by demanding a “fair solution”! When are we going to grow up?
I do not criticize the deal, that is for the Israeli voters to decide.
But Netanyahu has proven that despite his magnificent communication skills, he is not trustworthy. The principle of no-negotiations with terrorist that he championed 15 years ago, he completely abandoned. Whether there will be repercussions only time will tell. What is the breaking point of public cynicism?
According to a poll Netanyahu’s popularity grew following the release of Shalit. Which is hardly surprising considering that prior to the deal the polls showed that an overwhelming majority of Israelis supported releasing terrorists for Shalit. That’s why Netanyahu did it.
Just proof that a true statesman does not go by polls but by doing the right thing. I am uncertain of the emotions of the Israeli’s but this seems to be a bad deal, although I could be wrong and only time will tell!
Until this deal I always said that Israel should not negotiate at all.
Why would terrorists risk their lives kidnapping somebody if they knew that they’d get no reward?
The IDF signs a contract with every consript that states that if he or she is captured that it will do all in its power to get them released.
I think the key word is, “conscript”, because a “conscript” did not choose to serve but was obligated to do so.
If a person volunteers or works for Haliburton or Blackwater etc then the situation should be seen differently however.
There are now many calls in Israel for the death penalty for convicted terrorists with blood on their hands which would prevent the claim that, “We will get you back regardless of your actions”.
Michael
Abe Miller is such a marvelous writer.
He should write a book about his experiences and research and go on a book tour and help to further educate the Amercian public.
today Jihadwatch reports that the SAUDIS will offer $100,000 for kidnappings if Israelis that result in prisoner releases
I liked this article
and I agree for each Israeli kidnapped and held, 1000 Fakestinian criminals should be executed until he/she is released
one rocket fired over border- 1000 back in return
it will never happen b/c JEWS in ISarel are too fair minded and moral to do such, but it would work
When Israel Attacks
It hasn’t been been an “if” for a long time and the “when” now appears imminent. The dilemma for the United States remains, When Israel launches its long-anticipated tactical strike at Iranian nuclear facilities, what will America do?
Despite being beset with economic upheaval and by endless threats from its other Muslim neighbors, it’s nevertheless a foregone conclusion that Israel will soon replicate the September 6th, 2007 attack on Syria’s al-Kibar nuclear weapons site which effectively ended the Assad regime’s pretensions of dominating the Mideast.
There is one significant difference between the al-Kibar strike by Israel’s IAF and the expected operation to eradicate Iran’s nuke capabilities, namely, al-Kibar preceded the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.
The latest news out of Washington is that the unilateralism-averse Obama administration has been pressuring the U.N. Security Council and the two permanent members who have opposed tougher sanctions, China and Russia, to support American initiatives intended to forestall a unilateral attack by Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Fat chance, as is the chance Israel will heed Obama’s importunings not to take out a growing and virtually-certain danger before it becomes an accomplished fact and much of the tiny Jewish state is decimated.
The latest news out of Tel Aviv is that Israel is developing ICBM capabilities and launched a test missile just two days after Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu again warned of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Those ominous developments followed reports Netanyahu has been working to firm up his cabinet’s endorsement of a first strike.
Israel is preparing for war.
Given international and IAEA awareness of Iranian progress in both missile technology and nuclear capabilities, Iran’s persistent declarations of wiping Israel off the face of the map, and their most recent vow to inflict “heavy damages to the US as well as to the Zionist regime” in the event of a pre-emptive strike, that pre-emption is a certainty.
The only uncertainty is how the United States should react. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5877.)
As an ethnic jew and religious christian, I have been a strong supporter of Israel since 1948.No more.
Releasing over 1000 terrorists who will kill, maim, extort, intimidate, rob, rape, terrorize innumerable jews is a crime of awful proportions. From this moment on, Israel can go straight to Hell as far as I am concerned. We should cut off all aid to them and let the moslems destroy them. Selfdestructive fools cannot be helped and Bibi and company are moral morons.
Blessings Abe, for an insightful article. I would add that, in the 70′s, Israeli policy (formal and informal) set the tone world wide for how to successfully handle terrorist encounters. The apparent reversal in approach is being viewed far too narrowly as the simple emancipation of political actors. (In fact, it is comparable to a mass release from an American death row of those already convicted of grisley crimes.) The more serious consequence will be the erosion of will incipient within the existing strategies of other nation states. Another will be the intervention of political actors, seeking political capital, into the terrorism management arena. When, over the next decade, those released resurface with more Israeli blood on their hands, or perhaps American blood, what will be considered an appropriate response? Try them for crimes against humanity?
It is difficult to consider advising an appropriate Israeli response when notorious murderers of Isralis are celebrating among their fellow devotees. Reading their cold-blooded plans, enthusistic endorsments of even more depraved acts, and encouragments of the young to so aspire, one wonders how the Israli decision makers have ingested their post-trade morning briefings. But what to do? Frankly, it may be time to visit the retirement kibbutzim. Having trashed a lot of good policy, someone will need to start over.