Posted on 10/27/2011 10:23:05 AM PDT by markomalley
A senior Hamas official says he would have preferred that Israel did not have the “strength” to exchange more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for a captured Israeli soldier last week.
“To do what Israel did shows the value Israeli society places on human life,” Salah al-Arouri, a member of the Islamist militant group’s politburo, said this week on Israel Radio from Damascus.
“This is a pillar of Israel’s strength - to wage a war to free one man, to free a thousand prisoners for him,” he said, referring to the Jewish state’s efforts to free Staff Sgt. Gilad Schalit from his Hamas captors. “This is the strength of a society and an army.
“As someone from the outside, as an enemy, I would prefer that Israel abandon that value, even at the cost of not freeing our prisoners,” Mr. al-Arouri said in Hebrew.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
No, it sounds to me like a Palestinian (and other Arabs if you read the comments) looking in the mirror and not liking what he sees in his own people.
A rare moment of introspection. Perhaps one of the consequences of an Iraqi democracy to the Arabic world is that they might finally start to see truths they have always tried to avoid emotionally.
Dead pool anyone?
Dead pool anyone?
I’d say the deal is having a small but desired effect. The deal wasn’t just to free Shalit. It was to start a dialogue with Hamas, to punish the PLO/PA politically, to embarass the PLO/PA and to drive a splinter between PLO and Hamas, and hopefully to get Hamas to modify its position and to get PLO to either soften or harden its position (either way is good for Israel).
There was a lot more than just freeing one man going on. Change is a constant in the middle east, Israel learns to adapt.
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