The latest round of negotiations directed by John Kerry broke down because Netanyahu refused to free a number of prisoners he had already undertaken to release.
Somewhere on the way, the Hannibal Procedure was instituted.
THIS ORDER is based on the conviction that prisoner exchanges must be prevented by all means -- quite literally.
In such cases, the first few minutes are decisive. Therefore, "Hannibal" puts the entire responsibility on the local commander, even if he is a mere Lieutenant. No time for waiting for orders.
When soldiers see their comrade being dragged away, they must shoot and kill -- even if it is almost certain that their comrade will also be hit. The order does not say explicitly "better a dead soldier than a captured soldier" -- but this is implied and widely understood that way.
If the captors and their captive disappear, the whole neighborhood has to be flattened indiscriminately, in the hope that the captors are hiding in one of the buildings.
At the height of the Gaza war, that is exactly what happened. An Israeli squad fell into a Hamas ambush. All the soldiers were killed, except one -- Hadar Goldin - who was seen being dragged into a tunnel. Assuming that he was captured, the army went berserk, razing scores of buildings in Rafah to the ground without warning, shooting at everything that moved.
In the end, it was all in vain. The army decided that the soldier was already dead when his body was captured, and now demands the return of the body, so as to fulfill another Jewish duty: "to bring a Jewish body to a Jewish grave."
DURING AND after the war, this incident led to a furious debate. Why, for God's sake, not let soldiers be captured? Isn't a live captured soldier better than a dead one? If for his return a number of Palestinian prisoners have to be released, so what?
This is a profound moral debate, touching the roots of the Israeli ethos.
David Ben-Gurion once wrote: "Let every Hebrew mother know" that she is handing over her son to responsible officers. Thanks to Hannibal, some Hebrew mothers may now have serious doubts.
As for Hannibal himself, I wonder what he would have thought about this.
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