Israel makes huge mistake and further weakens its deterrence

Israel in a decision that creates incentives for terrorists to take more hostages, not less made a lousy move in the war on terrorism -- trading live terrorist scum for the bodies of dead soldiers.

Israel originally negotiated with Hizballah to return 5 live terrorists and 199 dead terrorists for what it believed was its two live soldiers kidnapped in 2006 - Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Instead it received the dead bodies of both. Israel then stupidly after finding out the soldiers were dead, continued the trade on the original terms.

This creates lousy incentives for Hizballah to continue to kidnap Israelis and kill them -- after all it has no need to keep them alive in order to get back its people alive.

Israel should have returned the five live terrorists in the same condition as they received Regev and Goldwasser - dead -- If only to preserve the lives of Israelis to be held in the future. Right now, Hezballah, and Hamas, the current kidnapper of Cpl Gilad Shalit have no incentive to keep captured Israelis alive - after all, they get back live terrorists regardless of whether they keep up their bargain and keep Israelis alive or if they kill their hostages and send them back dead.

This is a bad deal, and creates all the wrong incentives for terrorists.