Shalit's a prisoner of a single line of thinking

The negotiations for releasing abducted soldier Gilat Shalit have not resumed since they broke off at the end of last year, according to recent media reports. During Ehud Olmert's term as prime minister, fundamental errors were made in the talks. The most significant involved linking the deal to an attempt to reach a security arrangement in the Gaza Strip, the choice of mediator and consent to receive a prisoner list put together by Hamas. This consent restrained the Israeli side, limiting it to bargaining over the number of prisoners and the names on the list.

	Gilad Shalit
	Photo by: Eran Wolkowski

Since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and negotiator Hagai Hadas took over, Israel has become more sophisticated, engaging in effective negotiations and transferring the go-between mandate to an experienced German mediator. Still, a deal has not taken shape, and Israel has been forced to confront values, practical considerations and the public in the face of a single difficult option.

During the stalemate, Israel must develop a new strategy and new approaches. Currently, the Israeli negotiator is authorized by the prime minister only to lead a negotiating effort. Responsibility for integrating all other critical efforts in freeing Shalit, particularly intelligence, operational issues and maximizing influence are not any particular party's responsibility. It is as if Israel is betting on the negotiation horse alone.

The responsibility and decision-making authority must remain with the prime minister, but he should entrust leadership on this subject to some other authority. This organization would initiate, prioritize and act continuously and systematically to free Shalit; it would use the defense and intelligence establishment, which would be responsible for planning and execution.

On the operational level, in 1994, Israel abducted Mustafa Dirani from Lebanon as a bargaining chip to free captured airman Ron Arad. Since then, except for intelligence operations, Israel has refrained from operational activity in cases of abducted Israelis and soldiers missing in action. This has been the case despite Israel's high capabilities in fighting terrorism. The situation stems from the chief negotiator's overestimating his prospects for success, instead of considering the possible operational steps. Defense institutions subordinate their own considerations to wider ones, as became very clear at the end of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

In October 2000, this bias sealed the fate of a border policeman, Madhat Yusuf, who was dying at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus while senior Israel Defense Forces officials stood on a hill overlooking the tomb, prisoners of this very line of reasoning. They were subordinating their own professional perspective and values to overly broad considerations regarding the problem at hand. And the results show they failed, just as in the Shalit case.

The operational dimension does not only deal with the most challenging option - freeing the captive soldier by military action. This dimension should include covert operations, which would make the captors' leaders pay a price for resisting a prisoner exchange.

Shalit's fate touches the heart of all Israelis, but it also directly influences their confidence in the defense establishment and their readiness to bear the burden on the home front in the face of threats. Therefore, if the negotiations over the number of prisoners has created an impasse, Israel's diplomatic and military leaders must regroup and break through the limitations of the current line of thinking and create new rules of the game.

The writer headed the IDF's department for prisoners and MIAs and was involved in the 2004 negotiations for returning three Israeli soldiers abducted on Mount Dov.