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TEL AVIV — Last Friday, an Israeli soldier was killed by a Palestinian co-worker from the restaurant where he worked when he was off duty. The Palestinian, Nidal Omar, convinced the soldier, Tomer Hazan, to come with him to a place near his village in the West Bank. Omar then murdered Hazan and hid his body in a well. He was soon captured by Israeli forces.

According to Israeli officials, during the interrogation that followed Omar claimed that his aim had been to trade Hazan’s body in exchange fo­­­r the release of his brother Nur al-Din Omar, who has been in an Israeli prison for the last 10 years. Nur al-Din is supposed to remain incarcerated until 2032 for participating in a shooting incident in the occupied territories that hurt an Israeli citizen and for a failed attempt to send a suicide bomber into Israel.

What gave Omar the idea that kidnapping an Israeli might help him get his brother released? The Israeli government itself — by caving in to terrorists in the past.

Following reports Friday evening that a soldier couldn’t be reached and might have gone missing, heads were spinning at the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence service, over how to prevent the familiar scenario: a soldier’s disappearance, negotiations, emotional extortion, public pressure, government surrender and an eventual trade for prisoners. Israel has gone down this path too many times for anyone to believe that it can resist making such deals.

The last time it caved, two years ago, was to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, a soldier abducted by Hamas. Shalit finally got to go home after five years in captivity in Gaza, but Israel paid a heavy price for that: It let more than 1,020 Palestinian prisoners go free.

During a cabinet vote Moshe Yaalon, then the minister for strategic affairs and now the defense minister, warned that striking a deal for Shalit would have sinister consequences. He argued that a 1985 trade in which three Israeli soldiers were exchanged for 1,150 prisoners held in Lebanon by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine later caused the deaths of 178 Israelis. Many of the prisoners who were released became the leaders of the first Palestinian intifada two years later and were directly linked to attacks against Israelis.

The cabinet didn’t heed Yaalon’s advice. Four out of five Israelis supported a deal — just 14 percent opposed it — even though more than half of respondents to polls conceded that the exchange would worsen Israel’s security situation.

This position may seem contradictory, but it was understandable psychologically: Saving Shalit meant an obvious gain. Facing his anguished family, on the other hand, was very difficult. And it was hard to sacrifice him in the name of sparing a possible victim in the future — a yet-to-be-known, faceless and family-less victim.

That yet-to-be-known victim was laid to rest Sunday.

In his condolence letter to the family of Tomer Hazan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged both “the anguish of losing a son” and “the battle against terrorism.” Over the years, in speeches and books, he has argued forcefully and methodically against caving in to terrorists. Yet he was the one, as prime minister, to close the Shalit deal and put it to a vote in the cabinet. He was the one who chose to boost public morale over sending an uncompromising message to would-be kidnappers.

We, the majority of Israelis, were the ones who cheered Netanyahu’s choice. And it’s because we celebrated Shalit’s release that we now have to answer for the Hazans’ grief.