Analysis // by Ben FrankelThe Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange

If everything goes according to plan, then this coming Tuesday will see Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas operatives more than five years ago and held incommunicado since – even the Red Cross was not allowed to visit him — return to Israel in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails (1,000 men and twenty-seven women).

Not all the details of the agreement have been released, but it is clear that the two sides, Israel and Hamas, agreed to compromise on some key demands on which they had insisted in the past, thus making the deal possible (note that intelligence operatives in both Israel and Egypt have warned that Iran may yet find a way to intervene and scuttle the deal).

Compromises
Israel’s main compromises:

• Agreeing to release several terror master-minds who were convicted of orchestrating the killings of dozens of Israelis each
• Agreeing to release Palestinians who carried out especially gruesome killings of Israelis
• In all, 450 of the 1,027 Palestinians to be released are regarded as “serious” terrorists, and of them, 280 were serving life sentences
• In the past, Israel released hundreds of jailed Palestinians in exchange for one or two Israelis held by Palestinian groups or by Hezbollah — but Israel always insisted that such exchange deals would not include Israeli Arabs or resident of East Jerusalem who were convicted for engaging in acts of terrorism. This time, a few of the prisoners Israel is releasing from jail are Israeli Arabs and residents of East Jerusalem.
• Israel has agreed to release prisoners which have symbolic value for Palestinians – such as the cousins Fakhri and Nael Barghouti. The Barghouti cousins have been in Israeli jail for thirty-four years now.

Hamas’s main compromises:
Why were to two sides willing to make these compromises now in order to allow the deal to go through? Analysts point to the following explanations:

For Hamas:

• Hamas has given up on its demands that the most notorious of terrorists held by Israel – among them Abdallah Barghuti, Ibrahim Hamed – be released
• Fatah leader Marouan Barghuti will also remain in jail, even though Hamas leaders publicly vowed to insist on his release
• 203 of the more serious terrorists released will be expelled – that is, they will not be allowed to return either to the West Bank or to the Gaza strip, but instead will be released to Egypt and Turkey, where to intelligence services of these countries will keep en eye on them
• Only ninety-six of the Palestinian released will be allowed to return to the West Bank

Reasons for the deal
The position of Hamas among the Palestinians has been weakening. After four years of controlling Gaza, the organizations does not have much to show by way of economic development – especially when compared to the brisk pace of economic growth in the West Bank. Hamas needed some victory – any victory – to burnish its image, and it needed it now.

• Hamas is in the process of moving its headquarters form Damascus to Cairo. Egypt has tried to mediate the release of Shalit for five years now – and it told Hamas in no uncertain terms that it regarded Hamas as the more intransigent of the two parties. On the eve of moving their offices to Cairo, it became clear to Hamas – perhaps it was made clear — that a conciliatory gesture toward the Egyptians would be the wise thing to do.
• Hamas failed to deliver on its promise of economic development in Gaza, but the move last month by the Palestinian Authority to gain UN recognition for Palestinian statehood threatened to make the PA’s claim to be the leader of all Palestinians even stronger. Hamas, by insisting that not only Hamas members be released from Israeli jails, but that Palestinians from all factions, including Fatah – and also including Israeli Arabs and resident of East Jerusalem – has bolstered its own claim to the mantel of all-Palestinian leadership