It is a week of intensely mixed emotions in Israel. Amidst the excitement of the families of Elchanan Tenenbaum and the three soldiers killed by Hizbullah is set the heart-wringing uncertainty of Ron Arad's wife and family - and both are offset by the fear that the 400+ terrorists that Israel is to release will resume their murderous activities against Jews.
"There is no doubt," says former Prison Service Deputy Chief Yossi Pollack, "that the freed prisoners will not only resume their terrorism, but will take a commanding role, as their time in prison has made them into a team and taught them much about terrorism."
In general, Israel's security establishment is apprehensive about the impending influx of terrorists into Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Another Prison Service official, deputy commander Danny Avitan, also predicts that the freed Arabs will resume their terrorist careers, saying, "There is no reason to believe that things will be different now than they were after the Jibril deal." The Jibril deal of 1985 saw the release of over 1,000 terrorists.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon said that the deal provides an opportunity to solve the Ron Arad mystery, and added that we are "not forgetting the three missing soldiers of the Sultan Yaaqub battle - Yehuda Katz, Zecharia Baumel and Tzvi Feldman, whom we sent on a mission 22 years ago and have not returned, and Guy Hever [missing near the Syrian border since 1997]. We hope that this deal will bring a solution to their cases closer as well." Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom also mentioned Ron Arad in this connection.
The willingness of Iran to cooperate, wrote commentator Alex Fishman in Yediot Acharonot today, could mean that Arad is no longer alive: "Iran wants to open a new page with the West - but it cannot do so by producing a live man who it hid in a dungeon for 18 years... A corpse can only divulge, at most, the time of its death..."
"There is no doubt," says former Prison Service Deputy Chief Yossi Pollack, "that the freed prisoners will not only resume their terrorism, but will take a commanding role, as their time in prison has made them into a team and taught them much about terrorism."
In general, Israel's security establishment is apprehensive about the impending influx of terrorists into Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Another Prison Service official, deputy commander Danny Avitan, also predicts that the freed Arabs will resume their terrorist careers, saying, "There is no reason to believe that things will be different now than they were after the Jibril deal." The Jibril deal of 1985 saw the release of over 1,000 terrorists.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon said that the deal provides an opportunity to solve the Ron Arad mystery, and added that we are "not forgetting the three missing soldiers of the Sultan Yaaqub battle - Yehuda Katz, Zecharia Baumel and Tzvi Feldman, whom we sent on a mission 22 years ago and have not returned, and Guy Hever [missing near the Syrian border since 1997]. We hope that this deal will bring a solution to their cases closer as well." Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom also mentioned Ron Arad in this connection.
The willingness of Iran to cooperate, wrote commentator Alex Fishman in Yediot Acharonot today, could mean that Arad is no longer alive: "Iran wants to open a new page with the West - but it cannot do so by producing a live man who it hid in a dungeon for 18 years... A corpse can only divulge, at most, the time of its death..."