In October 2011 Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted by the Palestinian group Hamas and held for five years in the blockaded Gaza Strip, walked through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, accompanied by militants wearing suicide vests.
His release was widely celebrated across Israel; in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, so too was the agreed exchange of 1,027 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Foremost among them was Yahya Sinwar, who returned home to Gaza, eventually becoming Hamas’s most important leader in the territory. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, then in his second term, did face some criticism for the starkly asymmetric deal. The daily Jerusalem Post said at the time that “any such exchange, however humane to Shalit and his family, would imperil thousands of other Israelis”.
