Anshel Pfeffer / Shalit affair reveals Israel's psychosis

This week, I called up Alan Johnston in London. Thursday is the third anniversary of Gilad Shalit's capture, I explained to the BBC journalist who spent 114 days incarcerated in an underground dungeon in Gaza, and Haaretz would like to interview him on his experiences.

"I decided a year after my release to stop giving interviews about my ordeal," he answered. I tried to impress upon him the special circumstances of the occasion, but it was obvious that he wouldn't budge. The phone call took only a couple of minutes, in which I did most of the talking, but I couldn't help but come away with an impression of a lack of empathy on Johnston's side for Shalit's ordeal. Perhaps that's unfair. Johnston is probably fed up with giving interviews, and quite likely he has a book deal that prohibits him from talking with the press until publication. But that was my impression.

I felt the same thing the following day when I interviewed a senior Red Cross official, who explained to me courteously and at length why the world's largest and oldest humanitarian organization has proved incapable for three years of fulfilling its historical role, to bring some sign of life from a prisoner to his family. Everything he said made perfect sense. The Red Cross can do nothing if Hamas will not allow its representatives access to Shalit. But there was something jarring to me about the dispassionate way in which he analyzed the situation. I know they are the rational and objective ones.

While for Israelis, and many Jews around the world, Gilad Shalit has become an enduring symbol for much more than the suffering and yearning of his parents, brother and sister, to them he is just another captive soldier. The copywriter who coined the slogan "the child of all of us," captured the Israeli public mood perfectly. Outsiders can never feel anything remotely similar: Almost 20 on the day he was captured, a trained soldier and member of a Merkava tank crew, not an innocent child and no better than any of the thousands of Palestinian "security" prisoners held by Israel.

Perhaps for those who sympathize with the Palestinian cause, Shalit is merely a pawn of an occupying army (even though at the time of his capture he was outside the Gaza Strip), and the international attention that Israelis try and focus on his fate seems to them like rank hypocrisy. The campaign on Shalit's behalf has emphasized his youthful visage, and footage of him in civilian clothes, as a child and teenager before joining the IDF, has been shown repeatedly. A story he wrote at the age of 10 was published with much fanfare as a children's book.

The Shalit family, with every justification from its point of view, has squeezed every nerve point of the public conscience. Staff Sgt. Shalit is a soldier lost on a mission and the IDF and government have an obligation to retrieve him alive. Simultaneously, Gilad is the nation's child, bring him home to Ima and Abba. The resonance of this campaign has perplexed and even angered some Israelis, mainly veterans of the defense and intelligence establishment, who while sympathizing with the family's plight, feel that an entire country is being held hostage to the fate of one soldier.

Some of this frustration can be seen in the tense relations between former Prime Minister Olmert and the Shalit family. In one encounter he reportedly told Noam and Aviva Shalit that "the country has no contractual obligation to you." When the last round of negotiations failed in the last week of Olmert's premiership, sources in his office briefed the media that the public protests on Shalit's behalf had emboldened the Palestinian side and hampered Israel's representatives in the talks.

There was a good deal of hypocrisy and obfuscation from Olmert, who never revealed his true position on the issue. Also on the part of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who support a deal in which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including convicted murderers, be released in exchange for Shalit, but continue to keep quiet about their views.

Meanwhile, a special committee headed by former Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar is working on a paper setting out standard procedures for the next prisoner situation. The recommendations are expected to include a clear rate of exchange: No live prisoners, only bodies will be handed over in return for bodies of Israeli soldiers, and Israel will not exchange more than a few enemy prisoners in return for a single soldier.

Like so many other recommendations of special committees, these will also be consigned to a back drawer. We are an irrational nation, whose drivers exhibit criminal disregard for human life on the road while sporting bumper stickers demanding Gilad's immediate release at any price. Public opinion overwhelmingly supported a military operation in which hundreds of Palestinian civilians and ten IDF soldiers were killed, but is in favor also of letting hundreds of unrepentant terrorists free, just as long as a 22-year-old is returned to his parents. Formal guidelines do not apply.

Experts look on in disbelief, critics speak of hypocrisy and Israel's enemies feel they are exploiting our weakness. It defies reason, but the stark facts remain. Israel holds thousands of Palestinians, they hold one Israeli soldier and there are no other talks on the table, while an Entebbe-style trick is out of the question. Meanwhile a nation's psychosis deepens.

Benjamin Netanyahu has to make the call. Either a grossly disproportionate exchange is strategically and morally wrong and Gilad Shalit and his family have to pay the price, or we acknowledge the fact that Israel operates by different rules. Three years are long enough. A decision is long overdue.