From Haaretz: Future will reveal real price of Shalit swap deal

In the debate on the prisoner exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, many Israelis identify with the suffering of the Shalit family and feel a duty to return a captive soldier, while others feel anger over the release of murderers who slaughtered hundreds of Israelis.

Symbolism has also received a lot of attention, but the issue that has been shoved aside in the debate - and it will surely be raised in Monday’s petitions to the High Court of Justice - is the risk posed by the prisoners being set free.

The last time a possible deal on Shalit came to a head, in December 2009, the chief of the Shin Bet security service at the time, Yuval Diskin, argued that a massive release of terrorists into the West Bank would severely affect Israelis’ safety. Meir Dagan, then the head of the Mossad espionage agency, said such a deal, the one on the table, would hand a victory to the “opposition camp” in the Arab world. ...

(For more on this, please see: http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/future-will-reveal-real-price-of-shalit-swap-deal-1.390319)