Israeli hostage dilemma: negotiate with Hamas?

With one of their soldiers in captivity for the first time in more than a decade, Israeli officials are facing one of the greatest dilemmas in a time of conflict: whether or not to negotiate with a group who has taken someone hostage.

The predicament arose Sunday when Palestinian militants kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Shalit and then dragged him away to a kilometer-long tunnel infiltrating Israel from Gaza.

Three Hamas-linked militant groups demanded Monday that Israel release all Palestinian women and minors in exchange for the soldier. A spokesman for one of the groups said the message was authentic.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other government ministers have been quick to reiterate the official policy of Israel as well as a plethora of Western nations, including the US: no negotiations with terrorists, including an exchange of prisoners.

But Israel's history with its regional foes shows that the country's line on negotiating over hostages and prisoners of war is fuzzy and complex. And the hard-to-swallow reality, some observers here argue, is that negotiations may be the only route to ensuring the captive gets out alive.

"We can come to terms with Israeli soldiers being killed, but we can't come to terms with Israelis being taken as prisoners of war," explains Anshel Pfeffer, a senior analyst for the Jerusalem Post. The last time an Israeli soldier was kidnapped, in 1994, the army launched a rescue operation that ended in the death of both the kidnapped soldier, Nahshon Wachsman, and an officer involved in the failed rescue attempt.

"The popular feeling is that an Israeli citizen or soldier must not be in the hands of the enemy, so some impossible mission has to be done," says Mr. Pfeffer. "The reality is, grin and bear it, and deal with terrorists."

That raises ethical questions, he acknowledges, that many here are afraid to touch. But they are issues that have come up in the past, when Western hostages were held in Iran and in Lebanon, and are being raised with increasing frequency vis-à-vis Iraq, presenting governments, employers, and families with the conundrum of how to deal with hostage-takers.

Israel's message on this is mixed. While Mr. Olmert says that he isn't interested in exchanging Cpl. Shalit for Palestinian prisoners, other sources here suggest that his very statement of refusing to negotiate can be read as an opening to the people holding the kidnapped soldier. Moreover, Israel has a long history of negotiating with groups it considers to be terrorist organizations, even making lopsided exchanges to bring soldiers and other citizens home.

In 2004, the Lebanon-based Hizbullah won the release of several dozen of its militants held by Israel in exchange for one Israeli citizen, Elhanan Tannenbaum, who was lured to Lebanon as part of a drug deal gone awry. The exchange also included the remains of three Israeli soldiers. Israeli experts of prisoner exchanges also point to the Jibril Deal of 1985, in which Israeli won the release of three of its soldiers in return for setting free more than 1,100 Palestinian and other prisoners.

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