Tel Aviv - A prisoner swap involving Palestinians and Arab- Israelis in Israeli jails being freed in return for a soldier held in the Gaza Strip for more than three years, has yet to be completed, but its probable effects are already apparent. The Islamic Hamas movement, which has demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in return for Gilad Shalit, will find its popularity strengthened, at the expense of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah party.
And the Israeli seige of the Gaza Strip, imposed after Shalit was taken, could be eased, making it easier to lift it completely in the future. This would significantly better conditions in the Strip, giving a further boost to Hamas.
Shalit was snatched on June 25, 2006, during a cross-border raid launched from the Gaza Strip by three Palestinian militant groups.
The price Israel has to pay for his return has been known ever since he was taken - the release of hundreds of prisoners, some of them high-profile militants with "blood on their hands" - Israeli terminology for those responsible for fatalities.
But so long as the deal seemed far off, the debate, on whether the price was too high, was more or less muted. It burst into new ferocity this week with a plethora of reports that a deal, if not imminent, was close.
Like all previous prisoner-exchange deals involving Israel, the final agreement will be controversial, and will expose the prime minister and defence minister - in this case Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak - to a fair amount of flak from critics.
"Emotions in Israel are high whenever a deal like this is under discussion. The public wants the 'boys' to be returned at whatever price, while the government is always torn between conflicting advice from professionals," Shmuel Rosner wrote in Slate in 2008 of a previous prisoner exchange deal.
A generalization, but not too much of one. Emotions surrounding Shalit's release have been high since he was snatched. Those who say he should be brought back at any price refer to the Israeli military ethos of making every effort to always bring soldiers home.
Opposing them are those who point out that releasing Palestinian militants is dangerous, since many of them will carry out future attacks on Israelis. Past experience, they say, has shown that signed undertakings not to take up arms again are not always upheld.
There is opposition within the cabinet to the deal as it appears to be emerging, but the Israeli premier should still be able to get a majority "aye" vote from his ministers.
As Rosner pointed out in Slate, "The heartbreaking fate of the families (of captured soldiers) tends to overwhelm more hard-to- define long-term strategic considerations.
At the same time, however, ministers could call for new criteria to be set for future prisoner deals.
"If the government sets harsher red lines after Shalit returns," one minister was quoted as saying, "we will reduce Hamas's motivation to abduct additional soldiers."
The opposite however is equally likely. Hamas and other militant groups are likely to conclude that only by holding Israelis hostage can they achieve the goal of freeing their own prisoners.
Moreover, whatever the parameters of the deal, Hamas will receive a huge boost in popularity.
Which in this case means that President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party lose. Abbas and Fatah have been slammed by Hamas for preferring negotiations with Israel, rather than violence as a means of achieving Palestinian aims.
Hamas and its supporters can now claim that whereas talks with Israel have led nowhere in the 16 years since they started, its methods - an attack which resulted in an Israeli prisoner - brought results, albeit after three years of tortured negotiations.
Abbas could lose in another sphere as well. If Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Fatah West Bank leader is freed as part of the deal, Abbas will have a real, and more popular rival.
While the Palestinian president has said he will not run in the next Palestinian elections, the emergence into freedom of the charismatic Barghouti will give the Palestinians a real choice, and the Fatah leadership, which has begged Abbas to stay on, a real alternative to the relatively moderate Palestinian leader.
"The Shalit deal," Rami Igra, a former senior official of Israel Mossad intelligence agency wrote Tuesday, "is not just about a captive in return for captives. It is a strategic step that will affect future events in the region."
