Don't negotiate with terrorists

There is not a country in the world whose leaders would rush to assist the family of a civilian who chose, of his own volition, to enter enemy territory; and there is not a country in the world that would force an envoy of its leader to stand humiliated in front of television cameras and apologize for doing his job (if I were him, I would quit this mission, which he is performing voluntarily anyway.)

It would be right to resolve the matter with a laconic two-fold statement in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledges the mistake of keeping the details of Avera Mengistu's disappearance a secret and expresses regret for the tone his representative Lior Lotan used in a conversation with the family of the 28-year-old, but not the content of what Lotan said. No more and no less would suffice.

There will always be those who pave the way for a new, reckless prisoner exchange deal. The late former prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin fell victim to such moves.

The protest against late former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's swap deal for the release of Israeli drug dealer Elhanan Tannenbaum back in 2004 failed. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made difficult concessions for the return of the bodies of two IDF soldiers whose abduction sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Olmert later tried to mend that mistake by refusing to sign off on a prisoner exchange deal for captive soldier Gilad Schalit, but Netanyahu could not resist temptation, and he eventually signed it.

With the Mengistu affair now public, Israel is now facing another such dilemma.

The history of swap negotiations conducted by four prime ministers suggests that they were not a matter of foot-dragging due to ethnic discrimination or malicious intent. In each instance, the leaders believed they would be able to whittle down the exaggerated demands of terrorist groups, but public pressure pushed them into capitulation.

Their test becomes harder each time. In this respect, Lotan was right -- criticizing the government would play into Hamas' hands and cause it to up the price it wants to extort from Israel for Mengistu.

Furthermore, the blatant lie that Israel's leaders refuse to pay the price for Mengistu's safe return due to his Ethiopian descent will unfortunately take root and add to the public pressure.

Just two years ago, a commission headed by retired Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar was established to explore ways to deal with the abduction of Israeli civilians or soldiers by terrorist groups.

Now is the time for the government to adopt the commission's recommendations. If Israel manages to deal with the psychological pressure, it will succeed in altering the enemy's mindset. We should not give them anything else.

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