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There has been much soul-searching in the Israeli media and within the intelligence and political echelons about the lessons learned from the Shalit affair. Among them there have been a few references to the Abusisi kidnapping which reinforce the impression that Mossad took him because it believed he had some connection to Shalit, something I’ve reported here before (I’ve used the English version of this article and touched up a few vague points with my own translation from the Hebrew):

Particularly surprising is the fact that during the five-year period of negotiations, Israel hardly took as hostages any “bargaining chips” who were Hamas members involved in the Shalit abduction, or persons close to them. Muawash Al-Kadi, a Hamas member from Rafiah, was kidnapped in 2007 and the engineer Dirar Abusisi was kidnapped this year in Ukraine under mysterious circumstances and brought to Israel. In both cases, the kidnappings yielded nothing [useful to find Shalit].

What’s important about this passage is first that Muawash Al-Kadi is described as a known Hamas member and Abusisi is not. It also indicates that the latter was abducted because Israeli intelligence thought he could provide information about Shalit and he didn’t. This means that all the other nonsense about Abusisi being Hamas’ chief rocket engineer trained at a Ukraine military engineering academy; or that the Gazan planned, with the support of Hamas’ military wing to create a military academy in Gaza–all this is utter nonsense.

They took him because they thought he could lead them to Shalit and he didn’t and he couldn’t. Everything else is hot-air, including the claim that he had any close affiliation with Hamas. Let Israel’s spooks come down off their high horse and admit they screwed up. Abusisi doesn’t belong in prison. He belongs home with his wife and six children. I’ve reported earlier that this innocent man suffers from painful kidney stones and accompanying sky-high blood pressure. The medical care offered to him has been substandard. Let Dirar go home. Enough with this mess created by Israel’s Mossad.