Truce or Dare

One way to understand Wednesday morning's prisoner exchange between Israel and Hizbullah is as a victory for the Jewish state's political leaders over its security chiefs. For weeks, the heads of Israel's intelligence agencies—most notably the Mossad and its domestic spy agency, the Shin Bet—had been pushing hard to prevent the swap. The intel chiefs had a tactical rationale for their opposition, but in talking to individual operatives, it's clear that their case also stems from something more visceral. "I haven't slept [some] nights in order to put people in jail," one senior Israeli source complained last week when we met up in Tel Aviv. "It would be very hard to be supportive from my position. It's important for us to describe the price." 
 
For now, the price is one Israel's politicans are willing to pay. After the cabinet voted Tuesday morning to approve the exchange by a 22 to 3 vote, Hizbullah  today returned the dead bodies of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, the two Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped two summers ago by Hizbullah militants, touching off  the 34-day war with Lebanon. Israel, for its part, set in motion the release of five Lebanese, including one its most reviled prisoners, Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese militant convicted of a notorious 1979 attack in northern Israel.

Israel has also promised to release the remains of 199 other Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners. Still, amid the flurry of images being beamed around the world from Israel's northern front, it's easy to forget that there are equally volatile prisoner negotiations being carried out in the south for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli corporal who was kidnapped near Gaza just before Goldwasser and Regev. In many ways the Gaza calculus involves a much more complicated equation. Already the fragile truce hammered out last month between Israel and Hamas has been violated repeatedly; last week, for example, Israel shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian milita member near the Gaza border, and militants responded with Qassam rocket fire. The problem with Gaza, the Israeli intel operative explains, "is that everyone has a veto"—including, of course, Israel's intelligence agencies.  
 
Israel's security chiefs feel fundamentally uneasy about the predicament that the Gaza truce has left them in. Hamas will almost certainly use the lull to smuggle weapons and build its military strength, they believe, and the heads of security will ultimately be blamed for any setbacks as a result. "I'm not sure I like the ceasefire," the intel operative told me. "The situation we're in right now is not good from the strategic point of view—and I'm responsible for the strategic point of view." A full-scale invasion of Gaza is equally unattractive, but a few poorly timed raids—like last week's incursion in the West Bank city of Nablus—could end up scuttling the truce. "We operate like a hospital," the intel operative said. "If things have to be done, they have to be done."
 
One additional Gaza worry, as far as Israel's security chiefs are concerned, is that Hizbullah has still not retaliated for the February assassination in Damascus of Imad Mughniyah, its military wing commander. Hizbullah blamed Israel for the killing, and a response seems virtually inevitable, despite the prisoner exchange. Yet political calculations could lead Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah to choose to react through Palestinian "cutouts" to minimize international outrage. "In certain situations it would be better for them to strike from Gaza," says the intel operative. "If you blow up an embassy in Europe, it's a problem."
 
Israeli security services and Palestinian militants also both have a subtle power to shape the political agenda in Gaza. On Tuesday, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister now serving as a special envoy for the international "quartet" of Mideast peacemakers, cancelled a trip to Gaza—his first since Hamas took control there more than a year ago—after the Shin Bet warned him of a threat to his convoy. Hamas leaders insist they're committed to stopping such militants, but they're also wary about the future of the truce and the Shalit negotiations. "If you're interested in peace and quiet, you don't start provoking everyone," says Ahmad Yussef, a senior Hamas figure. From the point of view of Israeli officials, Hamas leaders tend to be frustratingly nonchalant when it comes to weapons smuggling. "What's the big deal?" Yussef asks. "We don't have tanks and drones." And then: "I wish we had them."
 
Meanwhile, aid workers are concerned that the ongoing boycott of Gaza since Hamas took power last year is continuing to radicalize the population. Despite some easing of shipping restrictions since the ceasefire, Gaza is still only getting about 10 percent of its gasoline needs, according to John Ging, the senior United Nations official in Gaza. More than 70,000 Gazans have no water at home, and 1 million people depend on food handouts. "It's a self-fufilling prophecy," Ging says of the sanctions. "You're going to make them more hostile. The situation is not sustainable. There is another alternative, and that's more violence." In that scenario, of course, it would be Israel's security and intelligence chiefs—not its political figures—who once again hold the upper hand.

© 2008