Sunday’s arrest of the suspected killers of Malachi Rosenfeld, who was murdered in a drive-by shooting near the West Bank settlement of Shvut Rachel last month, once again highlighted the ever-growing price of the 2011 prisoner exchange that freed kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.

Almost four years after that deal, in which Israel freed 1,027 terrorists to get Shalit back, even those who supported it – primarily on the grounds that Israel had an obligation to its soldiers – are obliged to acknowledge its negative aspects. And it must be admitted that these weren’t unforeseen.

According to the Shin Bet security service, the person behind the terrorist cell that murdered Rosenfeld and wounded three other civilians, and also perpetrated two other shooting attacks in the Ramallah area, is Ahmed Najar. Najar is a Hamas operative who served eight years in an Israeli jail for involvement in the murder of six other Israelis before being freed in the Shalit deal. Under the terms of that deal, he was deported to Gaza rather than being allowed to return to the West Bank, but he later left Gaza for Jordan.

Nor is this the first time someone freed in the Shalit deal has returned to terror. Haaretz has reported before that Hamas’ West Bank terror network is now run mainly by other prisoners freed in that deal who were similarly deported to Gaza and are still based there.

Read the article in full at Haaretz.