Missing

"The Fate Of Israel's MIAs Says Much About Peace Hopes." There's no doubt we're on a faster track toward another Israeli-Palestinian agreement than we have been in more than a decade. The White House files have been dusted off, updated and presented to a president who, unlike his predecessor, has enough self-confidence to take on this formidable task.

In holding Benjamin Netanyahu's feet to the fire over settlement expansion, President Obama is clearly trying to regain Washington's lost "honest broker" status among the Palestinians. Since carte blanche to Fatah and Hamas will quickly doom the process, he should work quickly to dispel that notion.

While the audacity of hope is a fine thing, hope of an eventual agreement between Arabs and Israelis requres faith that, one day, everyone involved will act in their self-interest to enjoy the dividends of peace.

But it's hard to see a significant trend in that direction among Palestinians. Their leadership still oscillates between doing little to stop terror, doing nothing, and actively participating, as in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The rocket attacks that increased in vehemence after Israel ended nearly 40 years of occupation there defy rationale, even in view of a long-term goal to destroy Israel, weakening as it does the international case that the Palestinians can disengage from the conflict and work toward coexistence, and bolstering the argument by Israelis and their supporters that a full West Bank withdrawal will bring much of the same.

These attacks are encouraged and enabled by Iranian and Syrian operatives, who can at least be said to act in their own self-interest: Fueling the conflict in Israel shores up the regimes in those countries, and weakens the object of their paranoia.

Another reason to question the ability (forget the will) of Israel’s enemies to give up the fight is the very painful history of missing Israeli soldiers. Some, captured during the war in Lebanon that began in 1982, have been unheard from for the better part of 30 years. More recently, Gilad Shalit has been held by Hamas, which actively negotiates for his release, for more than two years since he was captured near Gaza. There is no recent proof that he’s alive.

Given the willingness of the Israeli government to do almost anything to get them back, even wading into ethically murky waters by trading hundreds of terrorists, it is in the self-interest of the militant captors to keep these men healthy and eventually make a deal, of which they will almost certainly get the longer end of the stick.

But not one of these soldiers has ever been released alive. Elchanan Tennenbaum, an Israeli businessman, suspected drug dealer and retired colonel, is the only recent Israeli to be released alive in a prisoner swap with Arab captors, at the cost 435 prisoners from Israeli jails.

The ugly truth is that the life expectancy of an Israeli, particularly an active soldier, in a terrorist jail is bound to be brutally short, and their fate is almost unbearable to ponder. In October, 2000, a BBC camera crew captured the horrific fate of two IDF soldiers when a mob stormed the Ramallah police station where they were being held and beat and stabbed them to death. Some of the rioters proudly displayed their blood-soaked hands for the cameras.

Last July, Hezbollah militants turned over the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser or Eldad Regev, who were captured nearly two years earlier in a raid specifically intended to gain Israeli prisoners. The ransom was five live terrorists and nearly 200 bodies. We may never know how long they were held before they were murdered. But we are also left to wonder what kind of better deal their captors’ could have made in exchange for two healthy soldiers, if their captors were capable of acting in their self-interest.

I met Goldwasser’s parents in the summer of 2007, about a year into their ordeal. Against hope, his mother Mickey explained how she was keeping a scrapbook of all the efforts on his behalf to present to him on his return. In the most moving terms, she spoke about how she worried about her son being kept clean and fed.

I also had a chance, long ago, to meet Yona Baumel, whose son, Zachary, was captured in Lebanon with his tank crew in 1982. About 23 years into his unspeakable ordeal, Mr. Baumel was still confident, too, that Zachary was being held alive, although it made no sense, in the absence of a deal in that time period, that his captors were still sustaining him.

As an added measure of cruelty, those who capture Israeli soldiers routinely, stubbornly refuse to give details about their fate, evidently to prolong the anguish of the soldiers’ loved ones.
Yona Baumel died last week at 81, without any confirmation of his son’s likely fate. If he had to die, perhaps it was merciful that Yona didn’t have to suffer one last time through what had to be two painful dates: The June 11 anniversary of Zachary’s capture, followed shortly by Father’s Day.

Fully renouncing hostility against Israel would mean new economic ties for the Palestinians, increased international and US aid, more infrastructure and development and an opportunity for a new beginning. But the question remains whether enough of them can keep their eye on that prize.

Few Israelis hide their desire to have a large, spacious homeland that might stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan, from the Red Sea to the Golan, with a Jewish majority. But their leaders have put aside that dream to act in their long-term self-interest, holding out hope that the other side of the equation can do the same one day .