On the surface, everyone—with the exception of Hamas—agrees that Israeli Cpl Gilad Shalit, who was kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen on June 25, 2006, must be released unharmed.

Mr. Shalit was taken captive when PA terrorists infiltrated a military base east of Gaza, near the Kerem Shalom Kibbutz and border crossing. Two soldiers were killed in the attack and four others wounded.

Hamas, the multi-faction Popular Resistance Committees (made up of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad terrorists), and the Army of Islam all claimed responsibility for the attack.

Two weeks after Mr. Shalit’s abduction, IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser were kidnapped by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Mr. Shalit’s freedom has been conditioned on the release of Palestinian terrorists serving sentences in Israeli prisons. It is not clear that the two taken hostage by Hezbollah are even alive.

In the weeks immediately following Mr. Shalit’s kidnapping, IDF sources stated that they had information that he was being held by Hamas somewhere in Gaza. The refusal of the PA’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, to release Mr. Shalit or allow the Red Cross to visit him, has boosted his image as a recalcitrant terrorist still committed to violence.

According to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, PA President Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly promised that Mr. Shalit would be released before the unity government between Mr. Abbas’s Fatah movement and the ruling Hamas terrorist organization was formed.

When the coalition government was formed in the middle of March, Mr. Shalit was still in captivity.

"It is impossible to ignore the fact that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has grossly violated a series of commitments that he has given to Israel, especially the commitment that a Palestinian unity government would not be established before Gilad Shalit was released. This commitment was given to me more than once, including in the Feb 19 trilateral meeting, and was given to world leaders, who will also wonder how it is possible to violate a commitment so grossly," said Mr. Olmert.

While some Palestinians have compared his plight to that of their own terrorists who are being held in Israeli prisons, no one disputes the fact that the status of Israel’s prisoners’ health and well-being is available to family members, that the prisoners were entitled to attorneys and trials, and that their families are allowed to see them on visits.

On the other hand, beyond the questionable word of some Hamas officials, Mr. Shalit’s family does not even know for certain if the corporal is still alive.

No concrete evidence as to the well-being of any of the soldiers has been offered. The Palestinians in Gaza and the Hezbollah have denied Red Cross medics and international mediators from gaining access to the soldiers.

Israeli government officials have been consistent, telling Mr. Abbas that Mr. Shalit’s release is a precondition for any diplomatic developments with the PA.

At a press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month, Mr. Abbas was asked about his promise not to sign an agreement with Hamas before Mr. Shalit was freed.

"We tried to release him alive, and it is our responsibility to preserve his life and to have him released alive. And this took us such a long time which lasted so far and he’s still not acquitted. However, we are told he is in good condition and he’s alive and we want to return him to his family alive," said Mr. Abbas.

Mr. Abbas then suddenly changed course. "And continuously when we speak of the Israeli corporal, we must speak of Palestinian prisoners and we discussed this lengthily with Prime Minister Olmert, and in my last meeting with him, we discussed in detail this issue and we laid down some joint ideas which could contribute to releasing him. We keep this idea until we make sure that things are moving ahead," he said.

In fact, during the last meeting between Messrs Olmert and Abbas on March 11, Israeli right-wing activists demonstrated outside Mr. Olmert’s residence with signs saying, "Gilad Shalit will be freed only by force."

Sources in the PA told Arutz 7 that any Israeli attempt to rescue Mr. Shalit would result in his death. The sources said the kidnapped soldier is being held in a booby-trapped building and that senior PA and Israeli security officials know where it is.

Israelis have been here before. In October 1994, an elite IDF unit attempted to rescue Cpl Nachshon Waxman from Hamas kidnappers in Bir Naballah, north of Jerusalem. Mr. Waxman, who had been held captive for less than a week, was murdered by his captors when the rescue team stormed the building. Another IDF soldier, Capt Nir Poraz, died in the ensuing gun battle.

The price demanded by the Palestinians for Mr. Shalit’s release keeps shifting, but no one doubts it will be high. At that March 11^th meeting, Mr. Abbas intimated that Mr. Shalit would be released within two weeks—a time period that came and went without any change at all.

PA negotiators demanded that before Mr. Shalit’s release, Israel would have to free teenagers, females, and the ill among terrorist inmates in Israeli prisons.

On other occasions, the Arab negotiators have demanded the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including those "with blood on their hands," meaning those who have killed Jews.

Israel, thus far, is contemplating the release only of those who do not have "blood on their hands."

Not surprisingly, given what is seen as the high price for one Israeli kidnapped soldier, the Palestinians have been motivated to kidnap more, hoping for more leverage in winning freedom for their prisoners in Israeli jails.

According to the GSS, 2006 saw an increase in both attempted and successful kidnappings.

DEBKAfile, a private Jerusalem-based intelligence service, saw a link between the seizure of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston on March 12 and the Palestinians’ determination to use kidnapping as a tool to drive up the price demanded of Israel for Mr. Shalit’s freedom.

According to DEBKAfile, Montaz Durmush, leader of a new terrorist group known as the Army of Islam (Al Qaeda-Palestine), has posted threatening notices to the British government about Mr. Johnson’s fate. The Army of Islam is reportedly the group holding both Messrs Shalit and Johnston.

According to DEBKAfile, Mr. Darmush’s goal is to prompt the British to lean on Israel to extort an exorbitant price for the two men’s release.

A team of 20 British agents, most of them from the M16 secret service, has been working in Gaza to make contact with the abductors, or just to obtain a sign that Mr. Johnston is still alive. By the end of March, they had still not had any success/

"It is beginning to dawn on the group that the BBC reporter’s seizure was not just another short-lived kidnapping of a Westerner like the ones plaguing Gaza and the West Bank in recent months, but a drawn-out affair with no knowing how it will turn out," said DEBKAfile.

On March 20, a longwinded, rambling statement was released in the name of a faction calling itself "Popular Resistance Front" with details about the Shalit kidnapping. The wording implies that the three groups holding Mr. Shalit—Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees, and the Army of Islam—are vying over which can squeeze better terms from Israel.

According to DEBKAfile, British and Israeli intelligence circles believe Messrs Shalit and Johnston are entangled in a factional rivalry in Gaza over who will dominate the Palestinian unity government.

"Neither PA chairman Abbas nor Prime Minister Haniyeh was in any position to deliver on their promises to work for Shalit’s early release. They never were, since they have no influence with the kidnappers and are not in touch with them," said DEBKAfile.

The Olmert government has indicated that, in exchange for Mr. Shalit, it will release Palestinian prisoners who do not have "blood on their hands," meaning those who did not succeed in murdering their victims.

Last month, the Almagor Terrorist Victims Association issued a report showing that at least 30 recent terror attacks—in which no fewer than 177 Israeli citizens were killed and scores more wounded, many seriously—were perpetrated by terrorists who had been released from Israeli jails during prisoner exchanges.

The report emphasized that "the term ‘without blood on their hands’ portrays these terrorists as less dangerous—but, in fact, they are ‘without blood on their hands’ only because the Israeli security services managed to arrest them before they could murder, or because they were indirectly involved in murder, or the like."

"In actuality, they would be quite happy to be ‘with blood on their hands,’" said the report.

While sympathizing with the anguish of the families of the kidnapped soldiers whose freedom might be won by a prisoner exchange, the Almagor report argued against releasing Palestinian terrorists. According to the report, a clear majority of freed terrorists return to terrorism after their release, "leading to a price in human life many times greater than the grave difficulties faced by a given individual family."

The report pointed out that, in January 2004, when the Israeli government released more than 400 Arab prisoners in exchange for Elchanan Tenenbaum, who had been kidnapped by Hezbollah, and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers, who had been murdered by Hezbollah, Hezbollah saw the exchange as a tremendous victory and began planning to take more hostages. The kidnapping of Messrs Regev and Goldwasser led to the Second Lebanon War last summer.

Between 1993 and 1999, almost 7,000 terrorists were freed. As of August 2003, 854 of them, 12.4 percent, had been re-arrested for murderous activities. Another two-thirds of them returned to terrorist activities in the form of command, training, or actual perpetration of attacks.

The acts of terror perpetrated by freed terrorists include: the lynching of two soldiers in Ramallah (Oct 2000); shooting deaths of Binyamin and Talia Kahane (Dec 2000); suicide explosions in Netanya leaving eight dead (March and May 2001); the Sea Food Market suicide blast that left three dead (March 2002); shooting at the Atzmona Yeshiva which left five students dead; Netanya’s Park Hotel suicide bombing during Passover seder which left 30 dead (March 2002); bus attacks at Megiddo, Karkur, and Jerusalem which left 55 dead (June 2002-June 2003; and the double suicide attacks in Beer Sheva, which left 16 dead (August 2004).

If he saw this list, Noam Shalit, Gilad’s father, was not impressed. On Wednesday, March 21, he made an impassioned plea to Gaza citizens in an interview with a Palestinian radio station, hoping that his son’s kidnappers would hear him.

In the late-night interview with Radio el-Hariyeh, Gaza’s most popular radio station, Mr. Shalit reiterated that he had received no signs of life from his son since his abduction, "only declarations from Hamas."

"I ask after nine months—hundreds of Palestinian prisoners should have been home already," he said. "It’s possible to solve the entire problem over one soldier. This doesn’t make sense."

Mr. Shalit told the host that he hoped talks concerning his son’s release would continue with Hamas, particularly with the new government in place.

The host told Mr. Shalit that everyone in Gaza was suffering as a result of Gilad Shalit’s kidnapping. Making the connection between terrorism and the kidnapping, the host said food and basic staples were running low as a result of the economic sanctions the EU and US imposed on the PA for refusing to give up terror.

The international boycott of the Palestinians has been in place ever since Hamas won control of the PA government. To have its funding reinstated, the Hamas-led government will have to renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and agree to uphold all previously signed agreements with Israel.

While the Hamas leadership has tried to play a variety of semantic games to bypass these demands, thus far, most of the international community has held firm.

The Almagor Terror Victims Association hopes Israel, too, will resist the natural urge to do whatever is necessary to win Gilad Shalit’s release.

"We call upon the public to totally oppose these vain and lethal prisoner exchanges despite the emotional difficulties," said the Almagor report.

But, thus far, Israel has not adopted that position, and the Palestinian push for additional kidnappings continues.

Last month, a member of the PA legislative body reportedly called on Arabs to kidnap more Israeli soldiers.

According to a report in the PA-controlled Al Ayyam, Fathi Hamad, a Hamas member of the PA’s legislative council, told a Gaza organization that supports Arab prisoners that "the kidnapping of the soldier Gilad Shalit hit Israel very hard."

According to the report, Mr. Hamad then "demanded the kidnapping of more Israeli soldiers in order to force Israel to free the prisoners."

Mr. Hamad stressed it was the responsibility of the government, the Legislative Council, the armed factions, and military wings to dedicate "all the efforts at their disposal to free the prisoners."

That attitude may help Mr. Hamad win votes in Gaza but it does nothing for the PA’s image on Capitol Hill.

Last month, the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the three Israeli soldiers being held captive by Hamas and Hezbollah.

Written by Rep Gary Ackerman (D-NY), the bill passed in a voice vote.

"We cannot compel such parties to release Gilad, Ehud, and Eldad, any more than we can force them to understand the difference between right and wrong," said Mr. Ackerman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Africa.

"You cannot disgrace someone incapable of shame. But we can let the perpetrators of this barbarism know that we have not forgotten what they have done and what they are continuing to do. We can bear witness. And we can add our voices to all those saying enough. Enough. Let these men go home," he said.

The new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon seemed to agree. In Israel on March 25, he told reporters that while he would meet with Mr. Abbas and other PA leaders in Ramallah, he would not meet with Mr. Haniyeh.

Mr. Ban did schedule meetings with the families of all missing IDF soldiers, including Guy Hever, Zecharia Baumel, Yehuda Katz, and Tzvi Feldman, as well as the Shalit, Goldwasser, and Regev families.

Following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Ban said he expects the new PA government "to live up to the expectations of the international community, for the sake of regional peace and security."

Presumably, that means releasing hostages.