Mnookin on Israel’s Deals with the Devil

Bob Mnookin (Harvard) published this op-ed in this past Monday’s Wall Street Journal. The opening:

It’s hard to think straight when negotiating with an adversary you claim is evil, and Israel proved it last week. The usual problem is a refusal to negotiate at all. Here the Israelis made what seems to be a crazy deal.

In a lopsided prisoner exchange, the Netanyahu government agreed to release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a single life: that of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal kidnapped by Hamas in a cross-border raid in 2006 and held hostage in Gaza. What explains this decision?

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