If there is an American soldier hostage, generally families of service members might be for an exchange; while the non-serviceman-family population would be more in tune with seeing the downside of releasing murderers. In the US, with a volunteer army, a deal such as this is highly unlikely. In the case of Israel with basically EVERY family being a service-member family, the entire country is deal-leaning. In a democracy, this placed tremendous pressure on Netanyahu to deal, a guy who railed against such deals over years past.
Bibi, however, is like an accordian. Squeeze him, and he folds.
What you say is true. However even if you are going to negotiate, it is a better policy to say not only will you not negotiate with terrorist, but that any captive held for more than 72 hours will be considered dead.
Of course any country and its people and especially the family of the victim aches at the kidnapping - kidnapping is especially bruising because it hurts the ego in the sense that the enemy got in close and grabbed you, unlike being shot from 100 yards or bombed and also because of the unknown, is he dead or alive?
So the policy needs to be you have 72 hours to turn him over, or we consider him dead and go after you.
Israel has been very nice to Hamas. Way too nice. I know there is a lot more to it that is unreported and not commented on. I discussed it a few weeks ago - Israel’s deal with Hamas raises Hamas politically among the Pals and damages PLO/PA politically. This is in part a way to punish PLO/PA by embarrassing them for going to the UN. It is a no-win situation for PLO/PA. If they want to appear more tough then they have to get violent and that will ostracize them from the UN and Europe. If they do nothing then they look weak because they lost at the UN and also Hamas looks like the Pals heroes.
I will have to dig up my previous post (many pages ago) because it was a lot more clear about how this deal is as much strategic and political as it is tactical and humanitarian.