Is Israel about to release convicted terrorists in another deal?

...Some 14 months ago, we touched on some of the same issues in "20-Jul-15: Pausing for a moment to reflect on when we lost our collective senses". There, we looked back bitterly on what we still think of as an Israel-wide craziness that brought our government to a transaction "steeped in yet-to-be-shed blood with murderers already mired in evil and hatred"... Let's pray we are not being led down the wrong path again.

Convicted of multiple callous acts of terrorist
murder, this unrepentant Palestinian Arab
was sentenced to 135 years in prison. How
 likely is it that he will end his days behind bars? 

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
13 September '16..

Barter trades involving Palestinian Arab terrorists are sadly in the news again. From a report this afternoon (Tuesday) via Times of Israel:

Lior Lotan, the chief negotiator on Israeli hostages, says the Hamas terror group has turned down an Israeli offer to exchange “the organization’s captives and bodies [of terrorists] from Operation Protective Edge” for the remains of two slain Israeli soldiers held by the terror group, Channel 2 reports. According to the TV report, Lotan also says Israel has offered to release Gazans who crossed the border into Israel and were subsequently arrested, in exchange for the release of Israelis who entered the Gaza Strip and are believed to be held by Hamas. The bodies of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, killed in the 2014 Gaza war, are in Hamas custody. The terror group has also admitted that 29-year-old Avraham Mengistu, and a Bedouin Israeli citizen whose name has not been released for publication, are imprisoned in Gaza.

Over at Israel National News, they offer this additional bit of detail:

Speaking at a conference of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism, Lotan said Hamas refused the additional offer of returning dozens of Gazans who crossed into Israel in return for Israelis who crossed into Gaza.

The Hamas terrorists can be counted on, we think, to try to escalate the stakes now by engineering prisoner problems in Israeli jails over the coming days. Getting their terrorist brothers out of Israeli prisons is, and always has been, one of their highest-priority missions.

(Continue to Full Post)

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