FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
JERUSALEM – To what extent can the state afford to risk its own security to free individual citizens from the hands of the enemy? If we look at history, we see that the parameters have changed profoundly over time.
Over the years, a kind of unwritten but firmly anchored in the collective ethos social pact between the state and the population has emerged in Israel, in which families entrust the lives of their children (boys and girls) to the army, but are aware that the government will come to power do everything to bring her home. This also applies to reservists, expanding the value of the pact.
However, it is enough to recall the controversy that flared up in 2011, when the then-government of Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to release 1,027 Palestinians considered dangerous (including 78 accused of terrible terrorist attacks) in exchange for the security of Hamas to release Gaza prisoner Sergeant Gilad Shalit Note that there has never been a lack of opponents of the “easy-open prisons” policy. One of the arguments remains that the enemies will do their best to take hostages and then secure the return of their comrades or at least erect protective shields, as happened on October 7th. In the years following the founding of the state in 1948, there was a proportionate exchange of prisoners. So much so that heated debates arose when, in 1955, it was agreed to release 45 Syrian soldiers in exchange for four Israelis and the body of their commander. The jump took place in 1983: At that time, 4,700 Arabs were released into the hands of the PLO in Lebanon in exchange for 6 Israelis.
– In 2011, Netanyahu’s government released 1,027 Palestinians deemed dangerous in exchange for Hamas-captured Sergeant Gilad Shalit
But the most controversial exchange written about in history books and military manuals today is the one in 1985 known as the “Jibril Affair.” Three soldiers for 1,150 Palestinian guerrillas and with them Kozo Okamoto, the Japanese terrorist convert to Islam who was involved in the killing of 26 people at Tel Aviv airport in 1972. From then on, the Palestinian guerrillas realized that if they could take Israeli hostages, they could achieve much, including their own safety. It later emerged that many of the 1,150 activists of the first intifada, which broke out in December 1987, had become Hamas fighters. Some of them are apparently among the suicide bombers who blew themselves up on Israeli buses and public places in the 1990s.