The jihadists will try, and have already tried. The abduction of an Israeli soldier was believed to be one of the goals of the Eilat attack earlier this year. It is possible that Hamas may now find it too much of a political liability to behave as it did in its kidnapping of Shalit in 2006, as the thugs who control Gaza currently pretend to act as like as much of a state as they suppose they have to.
However, that leaves numerous other jihadist groups, splinter groups, and freelancers that do not control territory, who can do the dirty work on behalf of the broader jihad against Israel. “Samir Kuntar: Kidnap more soldiers,” by Roi Kais for YNet News, October 19:
The Shalit deal proves that resistance and resistance alone is the only way to free prisoners, Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar said Wednesday. Kuntar was released in 2008 together with four Hezbollah men in exchange for the bodies of abducted soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.
Another study in contrasts.
Kuntar called on Palestinian organizations to kidnap more soldiers in order to bring about the release of the remaining prisoners held in Israel.
In an interview with Hezbollah’s Al-Nour TV station, Kuntar said: “From the first day Shalit was kidnapped, the enemy wasted its resources on obtaining a piece of information on his whereabouts. It was always confident it would get to him. This was the attitude for five years until the last moment of the prisoner exchange. But it failed miserably in a 360 square meter area which the enemy knows through and through.”
Kuntar also stressed the historic importance of the deal and explained that Israel went back on its terms of the Oslo Accords — refusal to free prisoners from Israel and east Jerusalem. During the interview, Palestinian prisoners who were released as part of the deal and knew Kuntar from prison went on the air.
Kuntar was the commander of a four-man cell which took Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat hostage in Naharia in 1979. The second daughter Yael was strangled to death in her mother’s arms as they were hiding in the attic. When he realized he could not escape, Kuntar murdered the father and daughter…