In 2011, there was intense debate in Israel about the wisdom of a swap of roughly 1000 convicted Palestinian prisoners for Gilad Shalit.
There were two main lines of argument. One is that such a lopsided swap would result in more kidnap attempts. The other is that the released terrorists would be likely to kill more Israelis in the future.
I myself argued that the swap should happen, before we knew the identity of the released prisoners:
Yes, statistically there is a good chance that there will be future attacks involving some of the terrorists in this swap. But chances are the attacks would occur anyway with different people. Brainless terror drones are a dime a dozen in the territories.The organizers who actually dream up new ways of killing should not be released. But most of the terrorists in the swap, from what I can tell, do not fit that description.
However, Israel didn’t only trade low level terrorists as I had thought.
The most senior terrorist released in the Shalit deal was none other than Yahya Sinwar, the top leader of Hamas in Gaza today. Deif, along with Al Qassam Brigades leader Mohammed Deif, was (according to reports) the person most responsible for the October 7 massacre.
Sinwar was not the only major terrorist released in 2011. No fewer than 30 of those released had been sentenced to at least one life term for murder.
From Elder of Ziyon, here.