Quotes of the Day

When my friends hear that I've spent a weekend with my family in their kibbutz in the Galilee, they are usually interested in two issues. One is the weather in the north (always unpredictable, compared to the warm and easy Tel Aviv winter). The other is the state of the border with Lebanon, which lies only a few hundred meters away from my parents living room. But during one recent weekend in the north, I could report to my friends that the predicted snow (which eventually failed to come) was negligible compared to the issue of Israel's prisoner swap with the Hizballah.

The deal — which took place in late January when Israel released hundreds of Lebanese, Palestinian and other prisoners (as well as bodies of Lebanese who died in battle) in return for a kidnapped Israeli businessman and the bodies of 3 Israeli soldiers — followed a painful Israeli public debate about the responsibility of the state to soldiers' families. The country was split over the principle of never leaving a soldier in the battlefield, versus the danger of the political and security costs of releasing active terrorists in return for Israel Defense Forces' soldiers who died in captivity.

For those in the kibbutz, the deal's potential for strengthening Hizballah might make the difference between leading a normal life, or as happened so often in my childhood, having to spend nights in the shelters, protecting themselves from bombs coming across the border.

Drinking coffee with my family and their next door neighbors, I learned that in spite of those threats, they support the swap deal and are doubtful that it would have a negative affect on their lives. "As a father, I can only understand the soldiers' families: they wanted their sons back. They needed closure", my parents' neighbor told me. He is heavily critical of the demonization of the Hizballah and its leader, Hassan Nassrallah, by the Israeli media and government, who represent them as crazy, vicious and bloodthirsty. If anything, he explained, since the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon more than three years ago, the Hizballah's behavior had been reassuringly predictable. "Each and every time a Lebanese died because of an Israeli action, we knew that a Hizballah missile would land in Israel. You could see the long convoys of residents leaving the northern town of Kiriat Shmona after such an event".

"I drive every morning near the border on my way to work," he went on, "and I can see Hizballah's yellow flags waving spitefully just across the border. But I have never felt so secure. I know they won't attack just like that, out of the blue."

Yes, he knows that this organization is an extremist organization whose declared aim is the destruction of Israel, is supported by Iran and Syria, and is equipped with long-range missiles, clearly a future strategic threat to Israel. He also does not forget the terror attacks by Palestinians who crossed the Lebanese border two years ago and murdered Israeli civilians, the aggressive incidents that claimed the lives of two Israeli soldiers — one of them only three weeks ago — and the antiaircraft missile which killed a boy in the town of Shlomi last year.

But these incidents do not even get close to the bloody history of this border prior to the Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and during the occupation that followed. Attacks became a never-ending horror beginning in the 1970s, when the late King Hussein of Jordan drove the PLO from Jordan to Lebanon, from where they attacked Israeli civilians whenever they had the chance. (The PLO was expelled by the Israelis to Tunisia in '82, leaving South Lebanon to other emerging resistance movements — such as the Shi'ite Hizballah.)

"Having said that," my parents' neighbor added sadly, "we could have avoided the whole inconvenience of dealing with the Hizballah had we released Palestinian prisoners as a gesture to the current or the former Palestinian Prime Minister. " From that perspective, he summarized regretfully, if there was anything he was really afraid of in the swap deal, it is the message that the Israeli government sent by it to the world. Can the bitter truth be, he wondered, that the Israeli government only understands the power of arms?

• MICHAL LEVERTOV
• What is the real cost of Israel's prisoner swap with Hizballah, asks TIME's Michal Levertov