You can't buy what isn't for sale

The latest news that the Israeli negotiating team has returned from Cairo without closing a deal for the release of Gilad Shallit is heartbreaking in the extreme... but not particularly surprising.

From the very beginning of this long national ordeal I have maintained that I honestly don't believe this kidnapped soldier (or any other kidnapped soldier) will be returned alive.  Yes, I know there have been tiny 'signs of life' that have been offered through 'interested' third parties... but such signs have been far from iron-clad in either provenance or substance.

But I don't want to appear heartless, so let's assume for the sake of this discussion that Gilad Shallit is still alive.  That doesn't mean that he will be returned in that state.  He is a far more effective weapon as a real or imagined corpse than as a live bargaining commodity... at least within the scope of the bargains Israel is prepared to strike.

That wouldn't have been the case if, say, Israel had hermetically sealed Gaza from the moment of the kidnapping and literally starved the people of the Gaza strip until our soldier was returned.  No humanitarian aid... no medicine... no electricity... no water.  Nothing.  Or if not a complete embargo, at least give my patented diplomatic plan for gaining the attention of Palestinian leaders a try.  It would have taken less than two weeks for Hamas to fold under such measures.

Of course that would be considered collective punishment; a war crime... but so what.  Isn't the open warfare Hamas has been waging against Israel civilians also collective punishment for the so-called 'occupation'?  And aren't the kidnapping of soldiers and refusing to allow Red Cross access and other basic rights accorded to Prisoners of War, flagrant war crimes? 

I'm just saying... if a civilized country gets drawn into a street fight with an entity that refuses to conform to any conventions of civility, I say 'live by the sword, die by the sword'.

But we didn't have the resolve to do that.  Instead we continued to behave as though this were the first time this sort of thing has ever happened to us.  Seriously, it isn't as though we have no experience in such scenarios.  The horrible coda to the second Lebanon war saw Israel releasing hundreds of well fed terrorists who had been accorded regular Red Cross visits, full medical treatment and clean living conditions that would make Israel's poorer sectors wonder what they had done wrong to have to shiver through the winters in unheated hovels while their tax shekels paid to allow terrorists to sleep in warm comfortable beds. 

In return for the release of these battle-ready terrorists, we received coffins containing the decomposed remains of our kidnapped soldiers that - right up until the moment the coffins came into view - we foolishly allowed ourselves to believe might still be alive.  I say 'foolishly' because common sense would seem to dictate that one should assume the worst of a bargain when the guy on the other side of the counter refuses to show you what it is he is selling. 

It was the worst kind of 'bait & switch' imaginable; a humiliating gut punch in front of the whole world when those black coffins were dropped at our doorstep on live television.  But we got what we deserved, because when you get right down to it, we were like tourists walking into the Arab shuk with money sticking out of every pocket, and no idea of how to negotiate.

Sadly, falling victim to this sort of gut-wrenching swindle is far from an isolated event in Israel's many forays into the Arab marketplace:  Debacles like Oslo come to mind.  At such public drubbings, peace came to be treated as a commodity that could be purchased by anyone (meaning us) willing to pay a high enough price.  And what we might now call swindles or even muggings are rightfully seen by the other side as 'windfalls'.  Who could reasonably be expected to refuse to allow a fool to parted from his money.  The proof of this is the gleeful anticipation with which Syria's Assad has announced to anyone who will listen his readiness to sit down and 'talk with Israel'.

Yet again and again we have been shown the difficult truth that many still refuse to internalize; that peace (or whatever is being offered by our enemies), is just a marketing slogan - a hook with which to draw us into the shop - and isn't necessarily for sale.  Once we are alone in the shop with all our money on the counter - or worse, in the vendor's pocket - the real negotiations begin... but somehow never seem to end. 

And each and every time we find ourselves standing helpless amongst the oily rug salesmen, we begin pulling ever larger handfuls of cash from our pockets in hopes of finally closing a deal for that elusive commodity; peace, kidnapped soldiers, security, recognition, a temporary cessation of rocket fire... whatever. 

Yet each time we think we've finally closed the deal, the vendors walk away with our money and assure us that they will consider our offer carefully... while even the rug on which we stand is unceremoniously pulled from beneath our feet.

I'm also the father of a boy named Gilad... and in my heart of hearts I also foolishly cling to the hope that the Shallit family will one day have their son back, alive and well.  But let's be honest with ourselves for a moment... the chances are heavily against that happening. [I pray I'm proved wrong] 

The problem is, we ruined the market for live Israelis when demonstrated our willingness- eagerness, even - to pay top price for dead Israelis.  Worse, our free press and idiotically undisciplined and loose-lipped leaders have broadcasted our pain so clearly to the terrorists holding GIlad Shallit that they know beyond any doubt that their interests are far better served by continuing to twist the knife of uncertainty in our national heart than by making a deal that would - at best - repatriate a few hundred terrorists that were sent out to die in the first place.

After so many humiliating visits to the Arab marketplace one would hope we might finally have learned enough to hold our own... or at least have gained the wisdom not to go back.  But the daggers in our national heart called Zecharya Baumel, Zvi Feldman, Yehuda Katz, Guy Hever, Majdy Halabi and Ran Arad have grown dull with age and their jeweled hilts no longer draw suckers to the shuk they way they once did. 

So a new, shinier bauble has been placed before us in order to coax the rest of the money from our bulging pockets... even as we walk willingly into the blade.  But what we fail again and again to grasp is that armed robbery and legitimate commerce are only distinguishable from one another by observing what each side leaves with at the end of the transaction.

So while I'm heartbroken that this latest glimmer of hope turned out to be a desert mirage, I'm not surprised that the rug vendors have once again walked away with a king's ransom - our pain - in their pockets... while promising to carefully study our offer.  And we don't even have the wit to realize that the surest sign that the latest 'transaction' has been concluded is that we've once again been left sprawled in the empty marketplace with our pockets empty and a knife in our heart.

[Disclaimer:  The concept of the 'peace process' as a fruitless foray by neophytes into the Arab Bazaar is not my own.  It was expressed far more eloquently here by Steve Kramer]