Leverage for a Prisoner Swap
Seizure of Hamas Officials May Portend Deal for Israeli Soldier

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 21, 2006

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.

Since Shalit was taken outside Gaza, Israel has intensified its hunt for Hamas officials in Palestinian areas. The Israel Defense Forces have captured 35 members of the Palestinian legislature and five other senior members of the Palestinian government.

During the war in Lebanon, Israel also captured about 20 Hezbollah members, according to a senior IDF officer, though he would not say if any of them are ranking. Lebanese officials noted that Israel's raid Saturday was carried out near the base of Sheik Mohammed Yazbek, a senior Hezbollah leader, who many suspect to be the real target of the raid.

Yazid Khader, the editor of Minbar al-Islah, the official Hamas newspaper in Ramallah, said he expected that the captives on both sides would be fodder for deals.

"Although they deny it, through secret negotiations, the Israelis will accept an exchange" for their soldier held in Gaza, he said. "And this will happen in Lebanon. Ultimately, they will sit down at the table and exchange their prisoners."

Such exchanges are not so simple, according to Mark Heller, director of research at the Jaffee Center. Especially with Hezbollah, Israel is reluctant to swap prisoners it held before the recent fighting.

"There's a difference between exchanging someone taken after the Israeli soldiers were taken and giving up people who were being held before. If they were being held before, that looks like we're giving in to straight-out extortion or blackmail," Heller said.

"With Hezbollah, you want to swap military people, rather than exchange soldiers for terrorists," he said. Israel also frequently insists it will not exchange those it holds who have killed Israelis and "have blood on their hands."

The deal that Egypt is attempting to broker reportedly involves the release of about 600 of the estimated 10,000 Palestinians in Israeli custody, and would include provisions for a cessation of violence on both sides and the end of the siege that has virtually cut off the Gaza Strip.

On the Palestinian side, an exchange could be complicated if Hamas officials refuse to take part, according to Ahmad Hezz Shriem, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council who was a prisoner for nearly 22 years.

"All of them will refuse to be part of a swap. They were kidnapped," he said. The legislators insist that as parliamentarians, they should have immunity from Israeli arrest. Their colleagues say they were taken by the Israelis because they are lawmakers.

"Israel just wants to disrupt our democracy. They want to inject chaos in the Palestinian Authority" because it is headed by Hamas, said Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and also a former prisoner.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said Sunday that Hamas members who have been detained by Israel do not deserve immunity.

"If the Palestinian leadership acts like leaders should, like statesmen, they will get the respect they deserve," Regev said on CNN when asked about the arrests. "But they can't act like terrorists, be behind suicide acts, be behind abductions, and get that."

At the Palestinian Education Ministry, Shaer's staff said his detention would seriously complicate efforts to reopen schools for 1.2 million children and 150,000 Palestinian college students.

The teachers have not been paid, but "Dr. Shaer was the one who was talking to the president, to the international community, to the teachers, to try to get the resources and get the school year started," Basri Saleh, an education official, said at the ministry building in Ramallah.

"They have targeted the man who was trying to keep education alive in Palestine," Saleh said. "What will they benefit from that?"