Israel chose life on Tuesday night. It decided to pay the price for the life of one captured soldier. One Israeli for 1,000 prisoners, 450 of whom are serious terrorists. For five years, we have been trying to avoid this decision, hoping to wake up one day to news of a miraculous Entebbe-style rescue operation that would bring him home. How ironic that the same family that paid the terrible price in that operation is the one to decide to pay the price now? (Yonatan Netanyahu, older brother of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, led the 1976 hostage rescue operation, and was killed during it.) New Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) head Yoram Cohen helped Netanyahu move forward with this deal. After only five months on the job, Cohen made a brave and controversial decision to overturn the decision of his predecessor, Yuval Diskin, to block a prisoner swap deal and allow hundreds of released prisoners to return to the West Bank. Cohen's decision essentially declares the security threat involved in this deal as tolerable: The combination of the security fence and the Israel Defense Forces freedom to act enables Israel to handle this threat. Palestinian security forces are also effective in the fight against terrorists, because they too want to wage a war on terror (though at the same time they may lower their heads as they did in Gaza). Israel brandished its flexibility on the list of prisoners to be released, not only allowing for more Hamas members, but also for Israeli Arabs. The list includes members of Fatah, Islamic Jihad and other resistance organizations, as well as Arabs from within the Green Line and from east Jerusalem. Israel is aware that it is giving Hamas ownership of all of these prisoners and that it risks Hamas becoming the patron of others still in prison. Hamas believes that it too was flexible, allowing the released prisoners to be deported. It also feels that it compromised on the list of prominent names -- those not being released include Marwan Barghouti; Ahmed Saadat, the PFLP leader responsible for the 2001 assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi; Abdullah Barghouti, a senior Hamas freight engineer; Ibrahim Hamed, head of the Hamas military wing in the West Bank, and Abbas al-Sayed, the mastermind behind the 2002 Passover attack in Netanya. Israel has been clear: This deal is not a complete surrender. It is a reversal of opinion, and that is why it took five long years to reach a deal. Hamas' compromise reflects the Gaza government's distress and its desire to overshadow Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' bid for statehood. During the negotiations, Gaza-based Hamas has taken the lead, leaving Damascus-based Hamas on the sidelines. Khaled Mashaal, the Damascus-based political bureau chief of Hamas, responded on Tuesday evening, but the tone was really set by Hamas military chief Ahmed Jabri. He spoke out despite the fact that it negates the future possibility for his own immunity if necessary. What is not exactly written in the deal is that if any of these released prisoners goes back to terrorist activity, he or she will be immediately detained or killed by Israel. Despite this, we must have no illusions: Many of them will kill more Israelis. This is how it has always been and there is no reason to assume it will change now. Regardless of all these concerns, the current security establishment unanimously supported the deal. Former Mossad intelligence agency head Meir Dagan objected to the deal; he was replaced by Tamir Pardo, who supports it. Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin was replaced by Yoram Cohen, who supports it. In the role of chief of general staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz supports the deal, as did his predecessor Gabi Ashkenazi. Israeli negotiating team head David Meidan also made a significant shift. He leveraged his deep personal connections with the Egyptian security establishment. The Egyptian moderator came back on the scene and helped to mediate a deal, following Israel's apology for the killing of Egyptian police officers during the August terror attack near Eilat. The coming release of 550 women and children, in addition to the 450 serious prisoners slated for release, can be defined as a gesture towards Egypt. The bottom line is that both sides should feel satisfied. Both Israel and Gaza were flexible and can chalk up accomplishments. For us, finally, Shalit's release; for them the release of 1,000 prisoners. The Hamas government finally learned a lesson about the gap between empty declarations and the limitations of power. All this will disappear the minute the deal goes through. In Gaza, they will return to plotting the capture of more soldiers and here, we will continue to argue about the price we paid. The Shamgar Commission, which investigated the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, declared that Israel would adhere to a one for one approach: a prisoner for a prisoner, a body for a body. These definitions will stand until, God forbid, the next time this happens; then questions about the price we paid will arise once again. Meanwhile, Israel is hopeful. Twenty-five years after leaving Ron Arad to his fate, on Tuesday night Israel made a deal for Gilad Shalit's life.
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