by Nadav Shragai
The story of Ayman
Sharawna, a Hamas terrorist from the Hebron area, should be of interest
to all of us. In 2002, he was sentenced to 38 years in Israeli prison on
charges of terrorism, including planting a bomb in Beersheba that
wounded 19 people. Sharawna was set to serve a prison sentence until
2039 but was released earlier, in October 2011, as part of the Gilad
Schalit prisoner swap.
Sharawna signed a
pledge not to return to terrorism, but he could not restrain himself, so
to speak, and in early 2012 he was once again arrested for terrorist
activity.
Sharawna was not
discouraged. He soon embarked on a 53-day hunger strike that led to
street protests and became part of the larger Palestinian "prisoners'
struggle." Israel was embarrassed. It succumbed to pressure and released
Sharawna to the Gaza Strip for ten years, rather than have him complete
his jail sentence.
Recently, Sharawna sent
a clear message to those of us who are still naive. In an interview to a
Lebanese television station, he said that he had once again returned to
military action as part of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas'
military wing.
The story of Sharawna,
who is old for a terrorist, is pertinent because Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas has insisted, as a precondition to negotiations,
that Israel release more than 120 serious terrorists with blood on
their hands, terrorists around Sharawna's age, who murdered and
committed crimes prior to the Oslo Accords.
The story is also
pertinent because the U.S. is applying pressure and also because naivete
continues to run rampant in our midst. There are those -- for instance,
President Shimon Peres -- who have suggested that we respond positively
to Abbas' request.
Released terrorists
like Sharawna have caused hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries
in the past few decades, but Israel simply refuses to learn its lesson.
Sharawna is not an isolated case. Hundreds have been released in
prisoner swap deals. Gestures of goodwill have boomeranged against us in
the form of dead and wounded. And the same is the case with terrorists
from the Schalit prisoner swap, even though this time we were told that
things would be different.
This past January, the
Israel Security Agency arrested about 20 Hamas activists in the Hebron
area. They were planning a series of abductions. Most of them had
already served time in Israeli prisons, and their contact person was
Housam Badran, a Hamas operative who had been released in the Schalit
deal and exiled to Qatar.
In February, another
Hamas terror base was exposed. This one was run by another terrorist
released in the Schalit deal: Basel Himouni, who had been exiled to
Gaza. In March it was revealed that Amr Dokan, another terrorist
released in the Shalit deal, had tried to recruit Amr Barakat, a
resident of Nablus, to carry out a shooting attack on the Nablus bypass road.
In May, a Hamas
operative was arrested in the area of Ramallah. He confessed that a
month prior he had been recruited to Hamas by Hisham Abd al-Qader
Ibrahim Hijaz, who is responsible for the deaths of ten Israeli citizens
and soldiers in several attacks. Hijaz was sentenced to ten life
sentences, released as part of the Shalit deal, exiled abroad, and today
he too lives in Qatar, where he is not content to rest on his laurels.
All of this information is freely available. Anyone who reads the Meir
Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center website will learn
all of this and more.
Furthermore, we've
almost forgotten this, but as part of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian
Authority promised to hand over those who murdered Jews after the
agreement was signed. The purpose was to highlight the difference
between the period before the agreement and afterward.
Despite this explicit
commitment, the PA has refused to extradite the murderers of Ohad
Bachrach and Uri Shahor, who were murdered while hiking in Wadi Qelt.
The same goes for the killers of Uri Megidish, David Boim and others. In
the beginning, Israel still demanded that these commitments be honored,
but after continually being rebuffed, it gave up and stopped asking the
PA to fulfill its commitment.
Now Mahmoud Abbas and the PA have
come along with a brazen demand to release terrorists from the period
prior to Oslo. This, at a time when terrorists released in the Schalit
deal and prior deals have returned to terrorism. No one has asked how
those who shirk their commitment to hand over murderers for punishment
dares to ask for the release of terrorists who are being punished,
terrorists who often return to commit terror.
Nadav Shragai
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=4665
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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