Hamas is exploiting the plight of two Israelis in an attempt to free more terrorists from jail, Avi Issacharoff reported in The Times of Israel yesterday.
[Avraham] Mengistu and a second captive Israeli, a Bedouin who crossed into the Strip, constitute significant assets for Gaza’s Islamist rulers. Hamas tried hard but failed to capture Israeli soldiers in the course of last summer’s 50-day war, but now holds two Israelis who fell into its lap — who apparently crossed the border of their own accord. …
On Wednesday, Hamas’s leader-in-exile Khaled Mashaal talked about negotiations between Israel and Hamas for two dead and two missing Israelis. He claimed that Israel has sought to work via European intermediaries for their return. But, said Mashaal, Hamas will not give up any information whatsoever until Israel releases all the Hamas members who had gone free in the Shalit exchange but who were rearrested late last spring, when Israel was seeking information on the three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped by a Hamas terror cell and later found murdered in the West Bank.
In other words, Hamas is seeking a major gain before it even consents to negotiate for the Israelis it is holding dead and alive. It wants to repay a pre-war “debt” to the Palestinian public, and especially to the affected Palestinian families, by securing the release of those re-arrested Shalit prisoners. This would also give Hamas a significant boost in Palestinian public opinion.
After visiting the family of captive Avraham Mengistu today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We face a very cynical and cruel enemy that denies the basic humanitarian obligation to send innocent citizens back to their country.” Netanyahu vowed to bring both hostages home.
Exchanging hostages for Palestinian terrorists carries risks for Israel. Last year, a terrorist who was released in the 2011 deal to free captured soldier Gilad Shalit killed a police commander and injured his pregnant wife and son. A number of terrorists who were freed in the Shalit deal have gone to Turkey where they assist Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, in directing terror operations in the West Bank.
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