Israel-Hizballah "Prisoner Swap"

The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported on its front page that Hizballah and Israel "will swap prisoners" on Wednesday under a deal mediated by the United Nations.

At first read, most would agree this sounds like terrific news --and how good of the UN to help, right? -- but it is not. Perhaps for brevity, the Journal omitted the crucial fact that the two soldiers Israel is to receive from the deal are dead. Hizballah, on the other hand, will get five live "fighters," plus 199 bodies of Lebanese and Palestinian others, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.

For some Israelis, this is a victory, as Israel, once again, shows how much it values and respects human life by "bringing home" its dead soldiers, Goldwasser and Regev. Their families reportedly are thrilled at the deal and lobbied hard for it. I sympathize with what they are going through and probably would act similarly were I in their shoes, but their position nevertheless is selfish, for it puts at risk the security of Israel and lives of other IDF soldiers.

After celebrations in Lebanon wind down, Hizballah will get busy planning, if it is not already, its next cross-border ambush to seize a fresh batch of Israeli soldiers. If such "swaps" were unachieveable, Hizballah would not try to achieve them. Sure, Israel will welcome its dead soldiers home but, soon, more will be taken, dead or alive, never to be seen alive again. This is too high a cost that Israeli should no longer be expected to pay. It's hard to say "no" to such deals, but ultimately it is the right thing to do, because eventually the terrorists would learn that kidnapping attempts do not pay off. If Israeli soldiers fall captive to Hizballah, only proportional trades, in both size and mortality, should be considered.