Almost six years have passed since the release of Gilad Shalit in October 2011, a saga that generated a national trauma that is deeply engraved in the souls of many Israelis. Unfortunately, the same story seems to be slowly repeating itself.

Shalit, a member of an Israeli tank crew, was abducted by Hamas in 2006 and held captive for five years. Ironically, it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, after negotiating with the terrorists, released more than 1,000 Hamas terrorists and murderers in order to bring Shalit home. This was despite the fact he had invested great efforts throughout his political career in preaching against negotiating with terrorists.

Shalit had spent five years incommunicado without any visits. During this time, Israeli society was torn between the masses of demonstrators who demanded that the state do everything to bring Shalit home, and opponents of a deal, mainly right-wingers, who demanded that murderers not be released in exchange for the soldier. They argued that a large proportion of the released terrorists would obviously return to the circle of terror.

On the heels of the Shalit deal, Netanyahu established a special committee, headed by former Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar, to set basic rules with which to conduct similar negotiations in the future. In 2012, the committee submitted a detailed report that recommended to severely stiffen the conditions for conducting negotiations for the return of abducted or imprisoned Israeli soldiers, and set out a detailed outline that severely limits the government’s freedom of action in freeing terrorists. For example, the report states that Israel should be willing to give up the bodies of terrorists it holds for the bodies of Israel Defense Force (IDF) fighters, but should not release living terrorists for an Israeli corpse. Though he was the one to order the report, Netanyahu did not bring it to the government for ratification, thus the document remains nonbinding.