GILAD SHALIT

The release of Israeli Sergeant Gilad Shalit after more than 5 years as a Hamas prisoner is obviously great for him and his family. It is also a very concrete example in practice of Israel's policy of doing all it can to bring its soldiers - whether alive or dead - home to the motherland. This is the flipside of the requirement that virtually every Israeli has to do military service.

However, the price for this good news is very high; the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, 477 immediately, and a further 550 in a month or so's time. Some of these people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time; but they also include murderers and terrorists serving life sentences. The families of the victims of these attacks are not all convinced that they should have been let go.

The worst aspect of the whole affair is that Hamas, the more militant of the two camps claiming leadership of the Palestinians, can (and will surely) brag that it is only violence that brings rewards in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If that view is not to prevail, then the Israeli Government needs to start reaching out to the Palestinian Authority with concrete proposals for restarting stalled peace talks. Otherwise, Hamas will simply wait until all of the 1,027 are back home, and then go out and nab another Israeli soldier.

Walter Blotscher