Leverage for a Prisoner Swap

Seizure of Hamas Officials May Portend Deal for Israeli Soldier

Senior Hamas legislator Mahmoud Ramahi was abducted by Israeli forces near Ramallah. (Nasser Shiyoukhi - AP)

RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 20 -- Nasser Shaer, 45, a bookish former professor and British-educated scholar who wrote dissertations on comparative religions, was hardly a firebrand. But the Palestinian minister of education was a man on the run.

He sneaked into his office at the ministry when he could, took paperwork with him and made calls for work from hidden locations, organizing the start of the Palestinian school year. This weekend, he met his wife and six children after they had left their high-rise apartment to rendezvous secretly at another house. That's where the Israelis found him.

Soldiers stormed into the house shortly before dawn and took Shaer away to be yet another chip in a potential prisoner swap for an abducted Israeli soldier. As the top education official and a deputy prime minister in the Hamas-led government, he is a ranking chip.

On Sunday, Israelis seized another senior Hamas legislator, Mahmoud Ramahi, near Ramallah, bringing to 40 the number of Palestinian officials from Hamas being held by Israel.

A few hours before Shaer's arrest, Israeli commandos landed deep in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Israeli officials insisted the nighttime raid was an effort to disrupt the flow of arms to Hezbollah, but many in Lebanon and Israel suspect the commandos were trying to capture a ranking militia member for a swap.

The events were seen as more evidence that Israel may try to win the release of its soldiers abducted to Gaza and Lebanon through a prisoner exchange, an idea once firmly opposed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

U.N. envoys Terje Roed-Larsen and Vijay Nambiar, who will be in Israel on Monday to meet with officials, have said they expect to discuss the possibility of an exchange. Egypt has said publicly that it has been trying to broker a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, and privately that a deal was near.

Following Israel's failure to gain the release of the soldiers through the war in Lebanon and the Gaza siege, Olmert is expected to be more open to the idea of a swap to regain three members of the Israeli army.

Cpl. Gilad Shalit, 19, was captured by Palestinians who tunneled out from the Gaza Strip on June 25, setting off the Israeli siege and fighting in Gaza. On July 12, two Israeli reserve soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26, were taken by Hezbollah in a raid near the Lebanese border.

After both raids, Olmert announced that Israel would not be blackmailed into returning prisoners it was holding.

"Olmert made a serious stab at trying to avoid this entire game by refusing to deal," said Yossi Alpher, a former official of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, who once ran the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. "He managed to keep the Israeli public behind him as long as there was perception that by fighting, we would somehow bring about their return under favorable conditions.

"But we ended the war without getting anyone back. I think the public is beginning to feel disillusioned on that score," he said.