Gilad Shalit, 23, is an Israeli soldier who, on June 25, 2006, was kidnapped by Hamas militants during a cross-border raid and has been held hostage in Gaza ever since. In fact, the whole state of Israel has been held hostage as a result of the Shalit abduction.
Hamas is willing to exchange Shalit for hundreds of Palestinian terrorists being held in Israeli prisons. Israel has on a number of past occasions exchanged Israelis held captive by Palestinians for hundreds of imprisoned terrorists. The Israelis have even exchanged large numbers of terrorists in order to retrieve the bodies of their dead soldiers from Lebanon.
Because Israel is a country with a very small population, each captured or dead soldier has a much larger impact on the whole country than the impact on countries with much larger populations when their soldiers are killed or captured.
If Israel refuses to exchange hundreds of its imprisoned terrorists for Gilad Shalit, they will be sending a message to every Israeli mother and father with a son or daughter in the army that their children will be abandoned if they are captured or killed behind enemy lines. And since Israel is a nation with universal military service, almost all parents have children either on active military duty or in the reserves subject to be called up at any time.
Conversely, if Israel goes ahead and makes the prisoner exchange for Shalit, it will only encourage Hamas, Hezbollah and other Palestinian militant groups to capture more Israelis in the future. After all, the reason Hamas kidnapped Shalit in the first place was because they thought, based on previous swaps, they would be able to get many of their imprisoned comrades released in exchange for this one Israeli hostage.
They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. That’s why Shalit's abduction has been holding the whole state of Israeel hostage.
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