Israel was happy, very happy. The news of a deal to bringhome the kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit arrived with the holiday of Sukkot, atraditionally cheerful weeklong harvest festival made something likeeffervescent by the news that a young man held captive by Hamas for five yearswas coming home to his family.
But by the time Shalit actually walked free on Tuesday, sofrail he passed out on the helicopter ride home, the elation was tempered bythe specific reality of the price Israelis had paid to set him free. The 1,027Palestinian prisoners to be exchanged for the lone Israeli corporal turned outto include men and women convicted of some of the worst terror attacks in acountry still haunted by the memory of the Second Intifadeh. (See TIME'sphotos: "The Five-Year Ordeal of Gilad Shalit.")
"Ambivalent," says Aya Ilouz, of her feelings onthe matter. Strolling in downtown Jerusalem with her husband, Liron, and theirfive-month-old baby girl, Yael, the couple is so in synch on the question ofthe day that they finish each other thoughts.
"Yes," says Liron, "we are very happy andexcited to see Gilad meet his family. And on the other hand..."
"...we are very concerned...," says Aya.
"About what happens next," Liron explains."When the next terrorist blows himself up, someone will have toanswer."
Just around the corner, on King George Street, Dr. AlanBauer had been walking home with his son on March 21, 2002 when a Palestinianman named Mohammad Hashaika detonated a suicide vest packed with metal scraps.The head of a screw pierced his son Yonatan's brain; the boy survived, but wasblind for three weeks and still limps. Another bit of metal went throughBauer's left forearm; he rolls up a sleeve to display the scar, an indentationin the flesh the shape and size of a D-cell battery. Eighty-four other peoplewere wounded that day. Of the three killed, one was a woman pregnant withtwins.
Though the bomber of course died, Israeli courts convictedthe two women who drove him to the site of the bombing, easing his way past theIsraeli checkpoint by buying flowers to carry in the Mother's Day crowd. Thewomen watched from a safe distance still near enough that one entered arestaurant in clothes flecked with flesh.
"These women, as I speak, are being released,"Bauer says.
The Chicago native addressed reporters in a room where thetelevision was tuned, like most other sets in Israel, to live coverage ofShalit's return. In an abrupt shift of tone, an organizer inserted a DVD of thedocumentary For the Sake of Allah, and the screen was filled with jailhouseinterviews of Palestinian militants discussing, often casually, the mechanicsof carrying out "operations." Specifics have a way of undermining theeuphoria of Shalit's release. Among the 477 prisoners released Tuesday, in thefirst phase of exchange are an organizer of the 2002 Passover bombing thatkilled 30 people, the deadliest attack of the Second Intifadeh; a woman whodeveloped an online relationship with a lovesick Israeli youth she then hadmurdered when he came to meet her; and the man who proudly displayed his bloodyhands to the mob gathered outside the Ramallah building where two Israelisoldiers were beaten to death after making a wrong turn on Oct. 12, 2000. (SeeTIME's photos: "Hundreds of Palestinians Freed in Prisoner Swap.")
When the list became public, relatives of terror victimsappealed, without success, to Israel's supreme court to prevent the prisonerexchange. The court hearing was interrupted repeatedly by distraught survivors,including Shvuel Schijveschuurder, who lost five of his family members in a2001 terror attack at a Jerusalem Sbarro. To protest the release of the womanwho drove the suicide bomber to the pizza restaurant, Schijveschuurder pouredpaint on a memorial to Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister slain by an Israeliextremist for signing the Oslo Peace Accords.
"When we say 1,027 prisoners will be released, it'sabstract, it doesn't mean anything," says Eliad Loreh Rosenberg, who waswounded in the 2002 terrorist bombing at the Hebrew University cafeteria."But for victims of terror, it's a reality."
Prisoner swaps have happened often enough that statisticshave been compiled. Israeli officials calculate that 60% of those releasedresume terror attacks. To help prevent that resumption, Israel insisted thatmost of the prisoners liberated this time be sent either to the Gaza Strip —which is sealed off from Israel, and under the control of Hamas, which says itcontinues to observe a cease-fire — or into exile in Turkey, Qatar or Syria.About 100 arrived in the West Bank, where the government led by Palestinian Authoritypresident Mahmoud Abbas works diligently to suppress terror, coordinating withIsraeli intelligence and military.
Still, in voting against the swap in the Israeli cabinet,which overwhelmingly approved the deal, minister for strategic affairs Moshe"Bogie" Ya'alon noted that Palestinians freed in a 1985 exchange —which brought three captured soldiers home from Lebanon in exchange for 1,150prisoners — would later cause the deaths of 178 Israelis. "They'veessentially released a time bomb for which no one will takeresponsibility," says Bauer.
But all that lay in the uncertain future. On Tuesday, JewishIsraelis stopped and stared at televisions wherever they came upon them. On thesidewalk outside the 24-Hour Hillel Market at midmorning, 50 people weregathered under the flat screen to catch the first images of Shalit, lookingpainfully thin as he was marched through a high-ceiling hall at the Egyptianborder. Behind the cash register, Merav Cohen promised champagne for everyonethe moment he entered Israel.
"It was moving. It was very exciting," says AnatRubin, 42. "I just saw photos of him getting out of the car. It gave mechills." But she said she had also heard Hamas say that, learning fromsuccess, it was keen to kidnap more Israelis in order to win freedom for the6,000 Palestinians still in Israeli prisons. "I don't want to see thephotos of them doing the V for victory," she says. "Like they won.They are really releasing murderers. I'm happy and sad all together." Withreporting by Aaron J. Klein/Jerusalem