Cabinet to debate limits on future hostage deals

In 2012, the Shamgar Commission recommended severely restricting how many terrorists could be released.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The political-security Cabinet will discuss legislation limiting the number of terrorists Israel may release in future hostage exchanges, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at a press conference.

“Now that [all] the hostages have been returned,” he said, “we are discussing the possibility of implementing the conclusions of the Shamgar Commission.”

Calling the issue “complex and difficult,” he added, “It’s not self-evident. We need to think carefully about what restrictions we want to impose on ourselves so that we don’t end up violating them.”

While Netanyahu said his instinct is to support such legislation, he cautioned that “the law needs to serve real life, rather than life serving the law.”

The comments came a day after the IDF recovered the body of Ran Gvili, the last Israeli hostage held in Gaza.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich then urged the government to immediately adopt the Shamgar Commission’s recommendations “to prevent the next kidnapping.”

Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party colleague MK Ohad Tal submitted a bill late last month to enshrine the recommendations in law. Smotrich called on the prime minister to bring the proposal to the Cabinet and back its advancement.

The Shamgar Commission was appointed in 2008 to formulate a binding, principled policy for prisoner and hostage exchanges that would prevent disproportionate deals.

Critics believed then – and still do – that these kinds of deals simply incentivized further hostage-taking.

One catalyst was a 2004 exchange in which Israel released 375 Palestinian prisoners — including senior Hezbollah operatives — and returned 60 bodies in exchange for one live Israeli civilian, Elhanan Tannenbaum, and the bodies of three IDF soldiers held by Hezbollah.

But Hamas terrorists had kidnapped an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2006, and negotiations were sporadically taking place regarding the price of his freedom.

The panel deliberately delayed submitting its conclusions until after Shalit’s release in late 2011, when Israel freed 1,027 terrorists — 405 of them convicted murderers — in exchange for the captive soldier.

Among those released was Yahya Sinwar, who later became Hamas leader in Gaza and masterminded the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel that killed nearly 1,200 people and sparked the two-year war in Gaza.

The commission’s recommendations included sharply limiting the number of prisoners exchanged for a living hostage or soldier; barring the release of terrorists with “blood on their hands”; and allowing exchanges of bodies only on a one-for-one basis or, at most, one living prisoner for an Israeli body.

Although the report was submitted to a Netanyahu-led government, it remained classified and was never formally adopted by any subsequent administration.

During the three hostage deals reached with Hamas over the course of the war, Israel released approximately 3,500 Palestinian prisoners, including about 250 high-security terrorists responsible for dozens of Israeli deaths, in exchange for fewer than 200 live Israeli and foreign hostages.

Israel also returned the bodies of 360 dead terrorists in exchange for the remains of 28 hostages.