Monday, February 04, 2008

Olmert to release terrorists

From JPost.com » Feb 3, 2008, y HERB KEINON :

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decided to relax the criteria regarding prisoners to be included in an exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit and push forward with a swap, despite vociferous objections by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet)....

.... Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin has argued against relaxing the criteria and engaging in a massive exchange of hard-core security prisoners, saying this could lead to a spike in terrorism and harm Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's standing among Palestinians, while boosting support for Hamas.

Israel's position up until now has been that it would not release prisoners with "blood on their hands," a broad definition that would exclude from any list precisely those prisoners the Palestinians most wanted to see released.....The deal will reportedly include the exchange of 450 Palestinian prisoners, whose names were drawn up over the last six weeks by an interministerial committee.....

....Last week's Winograd Committee report on the Second Lebanon War strongly urged that Israel not do "crazy deals" to secure the release of captured soldiers, since this only boosted terrorists' motivation to capture more.

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