A. It is in many ways a fascinating commentary on things that are right and wrong in Israeli society, and not only regarding public thinking about security. On Sunday, 10,000 marchers set out from Mitzpeh Hila, Shalit's home in the Western Galilee, to march to the prime minister's office in Jerusalem. Led by Shalit's parents, universally admired as decent and modest people who after four years of their son's captivity have lost faith in government efforts to free him, the marchers plan to camp outside Netanyahu's office until Gilad is free. 

Two of the country's three biggest circulation dailies (the third is Sheldon Edelson's pro-Netanyahu freebee) have adopted the march and distributed yellow ribbons to readers. The numbers of marchers will undoubtedly swell in the course of the coming ten days of daily marches on roads secured by the police. Already three members of Netanyahu's government have broken ranks and announced they will join the marchers in sympathy.

The march represents not only arguably negative social trends like highly amplified media hype, society's apparent need to idolize and sentimentalize in an age of "reality", and all-pervasive communications. It also stands for an increasingly rare commodity these days: Israeli societal solidarity. It sends a message of support to the IDF and seeks to underline a cherished Israeli and Jewish value: never abandoning prisoners of Zion. By comparing Shalit to the long-disappeared (since 1986) Ron Arad--who was not ransomed from Lebanese Shi'ite militants because the defense minister of the day, Yitzhak Rabin, refused to pay the price in released terrorists, and then disappeared and is presumed dead--the march calls upon the country's political leaders not to delay Shalit's release until he can no longer be accounted for.

For its part, the Netanyahu government is calling for a "steadfast stand" against the pressures of the Shalit family and the marchers. It points out that in its last offer to Hamas it agreed to release nearly all the 1,000 or so prisoners on the Islamist movement's list, balking only at a handful, each of whom were convicted of the murder of dozens of Israelis, and insisting that the worst terrorists on the list to be released whose origins are in the West Bank, be repatriated to the Gaza Strip where their potential for causing further harm will be radically reduced.

Netanyahu argues that a single Israeli POW should not be released at any price when the rate of recidivism among terrorists released in prisoner exchanges over past decades is around 50 percent. Bowing to Hamas demands will only encourage the next abduction of an Israeli. So, after an exchange, future Hamas terrorism and abductions will be on the conscience of those who pressured for a precipitous release of prisoners, but will affect all Israelis. 

Somewhere, Netanyahu argues, a line has to be drawn. If Israel stands firm, Hamas will eventually accept what is by any standard an incredibly generous asymmetrical offer. In this regard, the march is counterproductive because it encourages Hamas to believe that, under public pressure, the government will fold and make a deal. (Cynics might argue that if Netanyahu withstands the current pressure and holds fast to his principles, Hamas will understand that it has truly reached the end of its extortionist powers, and make the deal Netanyahu has offered.)

Both the Shalit marchers and Netanyahu are right.

A. The Olmert government, on whose watch Shalit was abducted four years ago this Friday, appointed a commission headed by retired Supreme Court Chief Justice Meir Shamgar, to recommend rational and binding guidelines for future negotiations with terrorist organizations regarding prisoner exchanges. But the commission's findings will only become public, and conceivably be turned into binding legislation, when the Shalit affair has been concluded. So there is at least a glimmer of hope that future exchanges will be handled in a manner that enjoys broad public and political consensus.

Meanwhile, some lessons are fairly obvious. Prisoner exchanges with Israel's state neighbors following inter-state wars (1948-1973) or even skirmishes may have been prolonged, but were always fairly straightforward. The Red Cross was involved and each side gave up all its prisoners, whether the numbers were equal or disproportional. 

This is not the case with the two militant Islamist non-state movements on Israel's borders, Hamas and Hezbollah. They refuse to play by sovereign state rules, reject Red Cross visits to Israeli prisoners and even hide the fact that a prisoner is dead until the exchange. In this sense, the prisoner issue is but one more dimension of Israel's inability to find effective military and diplomatic means for dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah.

Some commentators point to specific lessons to be learned from the way the Olmert government dealt with the Goldwasser-Regev exchange with Hezbollah and the Shalit issue with Hamas. A senior Egyptian official recently told me that Cairo had suggested to Israel to hold off on the Goldwasser-Regev exchange of July 2008, in which a high price was paid to Hezbollah for what turned out to be two corpses--Hezbollah made it impossible to verify absolutely until the last moment that the two Israelis were dead--and link it to a deal with Hamas for Shalit, who was known to be alive. The Egyptian stated that Hamas agreed to the linkage, which could conceivably have improved both exchanges from the Israeli standpoint.

Olmert is also reported to have commenced prisoner exchange negotiations with Hamas by asking it to submit a list of the prisoners whose freedom it demands, rather than first presenting an Israeli offer. Consequently, Hamas cannot agree to concessions on its demand--its list has not changed in four years--without losing face.

Perhaps the primary lesson was illustrated just last week when Israel backed down from its economic blockade of Gaza. At several points over the past four years, Israeli spokespersons linked the blockade, which imposed collective punishment on 1.5 million Gazans and gave Israel a black name in the world, to Shalit's freedom. Clearly, and with all due respect to the commitment of Israeli society to free Shalit, it is a mistake to allow the fate of a single soldier to dictate a country's strategy in issues of peace and war.

A. Yes, a significant one. Ten years ago this July, Bashar Assad became president of Syria. At the time he succeeded his deceased father, Hafez, few saw the aspiring young optometry student as a viable long-term leader for Syria. He had no experience. He was rumored to be a computer-game freak, glued to his play-station all day. He would be eaten alive by the Alawite mafiosi his father had placed in power. Alternatively, he would be hopelessly manipulated by them.

Today, Assad has staked out a position for himself as a unique Arab leader. He is increasingly allied with non-Arab Iran and Turkey but can no longer be ignored by the rest of the Arab world. After being forced to withdraw his army from Lebanon following the Hariri assassination four years ago, he has maneuvered Damascus back into a hegemonic role vis-a-vis Beirut. While he keeps open the option of resuming peace negotiations with Israel, he also successfully portrays Jerusalem as the party that refuses to negotiate and keeps Washington at arm's length.

To be sure, there have been setbacks. In recent years, Israel has allegedly bombed a Syrian nuclear installation and assassinated senior terrorist figures and liaisons with Iran under Assad's nose, with no Syrian response. To become a virtual ally of Turkey's Erdogan, Assad had to give up Syria's claim to Iskanderun/Hatai province on the two countries' border. The Hariri assassination generated international isolation and a United Nations investigation that is still open and that could eventually finger officials close to Assad. Syria's economy is going nowhere. Its human rights record is one of the worst in the Arab world.

But Assad, only 44, seems comfortable and unchallenged in power. Rival Arab leaders like Egypt's Mubarak and Saudi Arabia's Abdullah will not be around for long. The Iran-Turkey-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas axis is flexing its muscles; a Shi'ite-dominated Iraq could conceivably soon join. 

Israel increasingly confronts a choice between renewed violence with Syria and/or Hezbollah, both of whom enjoy growing strategic depth thanks to these alliances, or attempting to reactivate a peace process with Damascus that could conceivably reduce the threat level from the north and distance Iran from the region. Assad, like his father before him, appears to be a leader who keeps his word and respects agreements. True, he alternates peace rhetoric with nasty and belligerent talk. But negotiating with him is worth a try.