A Captivating Proposition: The Ethics And Likely Effectiveness Of Israel's Proposed Prisoner Exchange Law

Abstract

This paper explores the background of Israel’s groundbreaking decision to release over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in order to recover Gilad Shalit, and evaluates the proposed law that would curtail similar types of agreements in the future. Because of how recent the events of the Shalit exchange occurred, and how novel the new proposal to curtail similar exchanges in the future is, this paper relies heavily on news accounts from within Israel and around the world in order to fill in the gaps that are unavailable in the present legal literature. Part I provides a background of the Shalit abduction and prisoner exchange deal. Part II compares the proposed law to the classical Jewish law of redeeming captives. Part III evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of the proposed law, and Part IV suggests that a broader, more ambiguous law akin to the classical Jewish law may be a more realistic and practical alternative than the current proposal. This paper concludes with the belief that the proposed one-to-one prisoner exchange law is a step in the right direction, but a bit misguided.