Terror Victims’ Group Warns Against Prisoner Exchange
Group says releasing terrorists for kidnapped IDF soldiers will endanger many lives, encourage more abductions.
Haaretz
2006-09-04
Israel should not pay “any price” to win the return of its abducted soldiers, the chairman of the Terror Victims Association, Meir Indor, argued recently.
In a letter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz, Indor noted that some acts of terror “have been committed by freed terrorists” and warned that a wholesale release of terrorists, such as Israel has done in the past, “will result in more abductions.” According to Indor, abductions are becoming a prime weapon for terrorist organizations, and “every release increases their belief that the system works.”
“What is the use of one release, when we thereby bring many citizens into the circle of immediate risk?” he asked.
Attached to Indor’s letter was a list of terror victims killed by released prisoners. These included Hagar Ben-Ovadia, murdered in East Jerusalem by two Fatah men released in the 1985 Jibril deal, who were caught only after they killed an Italian tourist six months later; and Eyal Yeverboim, 27, and seven-month-old Shaked Avraham, who were murdered by terrorists who had been released two months earlier in order to “strengthen” Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.