Has Israel been involved in prisoner exchanges before, either with Hamas or Hezbullah?
Samar Assad has listed the prisoner exchanges in which Israel has taken part.
From http://www.counterpunch.com/assad07142006.html
Israeli-Hizballah Prisoner Exchanges
To date, there have been three prisoner exchange deals between Israel and Hizballah, the details of which follow.
In July 1996, Hizballah released the remains of two Israeli soldiers, Joseph Fink and Rahamim Alsheich, in exchange for the remains of 123 Lebanese soldiers. On the same day, Hizballah released 25 members of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), an army loyal to Israel. In exchange the SLA released 25 Lebanese prisoners from the Khima Prison in south Lebanon.
In June 1998, Hizballah returned the remains of Sergeant First Class Itamar Ilya in exchange for the remains of 40 Hizballah soldiers, among them the body of Hizballah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's son who was killed in 1997. The deal also included the release of Lebanese prisoners. The bodies of the Hizballah soldiers were transported by a French aircraft.
In January 2004, in the largest prisoner exchange, Israel released a total of 436 prisoners including 400 Palestinians; 23 Lebanese; two Syrians; three Moroccans; three Sudanese; a Libyan; and a German Muslim. Israel also returned the remains of 59 Lebanese soldiers. Israel received the remains of three Israel soldiers and the release of Elhanan Tennenbaum who Hizballah claimed was an Israeli intelligence officer. Sheikh Abdel Kareem Obaid, who Israel kidnapped from Lebanese territory in 1989, and Sheikh Mustafa Dirani, kidnapped in 1994, were among those released by Israel in exchange for its three soldiers and intelligence officer.
An Israeli soldier was kidnapped in 1994. Israel decided on a military option, which ended with the soldier being killed.
Israel and Hamas
About twelve years before Hamas' 25 June 2006 capture of Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit in Gaza, Israeli soldier Nachshon Wachsman was taken prisoner in October 1994. Like today, Israel said it would not negotiate a release with Hamas. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin decided on a military option to free the Israeli soldier. The Israeli commando raid on a house in Bir Nabala near Jerusalem not only left the Hamas captors dead but with them Wachsman.
Hamas has demanded the release of all female and minor Palestinian prisoners held by Israel in exchange for Shalit.
Meanwhile Israel continues to ignore international law and hold several hundred Palestinian women and children in custody without trial in addition to the nearly 10,000 Palestinian men under similar conditions. Quoting from the same article,
According to a recent poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center (JMCC), 69 percent of Palestinians insist on an exchange for Shalit's release. The high support for a prisoner exchange stems from the sensitivity of the prisoner issue within Palestinian society. The vast majority of Palestinians have been directly or indirectly affected by Israel's policy of arbitrary or blanket arrests and hold deep resentment for political violations of their leaders' authority and autonomy.
Israel's imprisonment and detention of Palestinians is an example of its failure to abide by international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. Administrative detentions, imprisonment without due process and imprisonment inside Israel are both illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Furthermore, Palestinian prisoners are routinely tortured by Israel and held in detention centers and prisons that do not meet the minimum international standards and are routinely denied visitation rights by their legal representation and family members. The vast majority of Palestinian prisoners are held without trial. According to Amnesty International, the trials that do take place often fall short of international fair trial standards.
Israel's failure to release Palestinian political prisoners and its continued arbitrary arrest of Palestinian civilians serves only to highlight Israel's belief that it is above the law and that the Palestinians are beneath it.
The two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbullah were captured on Lebanese soil as part of an Israeli raid into Lebanon and not, as the BBC and other media are reporting, as part of a Hezbullah raid into Israel. In fact, shortly before Israel violated Lebanese sovereignty in this way Israel had prepared its response following such a kidnap.
From http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3329isr_palestine_war.html
According to a report in the July 13 Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the Israel military had approved a plan for a major exercise along the Israeli-Lebanese border, based on a scenario of a Hezbollah capture of Israeli solders, after which Israel would respond with a heavy air and land assault into southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah. It is this plan which is now being carried out. As of this writing, Israel has begun to mobilize its reserves, including a full division, to be deployed on the already heavily fortified northern border.
This would explain how Israel has been able to put into effect so quickly such a slick operation, with ships blockading ports, the military logistics required etc. I would say from the evidence that Israel planned this months ago. They sent that patrol over the border on purpose, and I would not be surprised to learn that Israel had virtually telegraphed to Hezbullah the time and location the patrol would cross into Lebanon, or that Israel sent the patrol into an area of Lebanon where Hezbullah was known to be strong, for reports I have read mention that that patrol was not even 100 metres into Lebanon before it was attacked.
What I am trying to get at here is that there is a history of prisoner exchanges between Israel and its neighbours, although a significant proportion of the prisoners were already dead. It would appear that Israel foresaw the potential for some of their soldiers to be kidnapped by Hezbullah. Israel continues to detain and torture thousands of Palestinian men, women and children without trial, ignoring international law, and yet refuses a prisoner exchange and instead decides to bomb Lebanon back into 1975, killing innocent women and children while doing so!
WHY?
And they wonder why they are hated so much?!
In 1948 the terrorists who founded the Zionists State of Israel forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into refugee camps, stole their land, and continue to keep those Palestinians in dire poverty and under virtual martial law/police state rule, while at the same time being subsidized by the USA to the tune of billions of US dollars every year. Why?
Why does the USA sustain Israel so?
If you understand how the Federal Reserve works then you understand that that system cannot go on forever. It has a built-in self-destruction button. It is doomed to collapse, and that time is approaching fast. In order to create a world war more terrible than WW1 and WW2 put together a source of friction has to be manipulated. That source was chosen centuries ago; Zionism. That is why Israel has been financed, to give it an awesome death machine, but more importantly, a nuclear arsenal.
If Israel continues this action in Lebanon I can see Syria and Iran getting involved, as PNAC want, attacking or invading Israel, and in retaliation Israel will unleash its nuclear missiles. When I wrote about "The Sum of All Fears" I said that the governments and military have been infiltrated and were being manipulated by a coordinated group of megalomaniacs. The US govt has been infiltrated by the Zionists in the form of PNAC, AEI, AIPAC etc. It is their job to sustain and encourage Israel into a war in the Middle East, which could very easily escalate into a much wider conflict. The point of this war would be the same as WW1 and WW2; the creation of a world government, which would be controlled by the same people controlling PNAC etc. This world government would be accepted by the world because WW3 will be millions of times worse than WW2. It took 6 years and 2 atomic bombs for the world to accept the existence of the UN. It will take something alot worse than WW2 for us to cede total sovereignty to the UN. This must be done before those who control the USA through the Federal Reserve lose their control with the collapse of the current monetary system. Hence the rush to create the clash of civilizations between Zionism and Islam.
The choice is simple; prisoner exchange, or world war.
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