Backpay's a bitch

The deal was announced on Tuesday by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Under the terms, more than 1,000 Palestinians and Sgt Shalit, held since 2006, will be freed, beginning in days.

As much as I have no wish to extend Sergeant (he was a Corporal when captured if memory serves) Shalit's captivity (or worse), I can reduce the wisdom of this exchange to this simple axiom: anything which gets Islamic idiots dancing in the streets is not a good thing.

The Israelis have in the past repatriated remains at an unfavourable exchange rate, so it's not a profound shock that they would do this. The only strategic upside I see to this is that there will be 1000 Hamas idiots more out of the Israeli prison system where they can do something that will get them killed, so we have that to look forward to. Otherwise, this is pretty bleak.

The precedent this sets is terrible, but the Israelis have obviously decided it was the best of a bad situation. I don't presume to have anything to teach the Israelis about dealing with their part of the world, but the calculus of this deal values the life (freedom) of one accidentally famous soldier over that of all of the people that these released terrorists and criminals will subsequently endanger.

True, there was never a shortage of Palestinian misanthropes to lob rockets into or snatch more people out of Israel, so it's possible that this doesn't elevate the threat in the area, at least not in the big picture. I just hope that the IDF will be allowed off the leash enough to provide some disproportionate riposte to any Hamas celebratory violence. You might as well kill a lot of their fighters; the exchange rate is 1000-1. Hopefully Gilad spends some of his backpay on a nice vacation.