Roots of Crisis: Why the Arabs and Israelis Fight

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But Hizballah and Hamas in this case have a more practical payoff in mind. Israeli governments have proved willing to make big concessions to get back one or two or three of their own captives, even dead ones. (In 2004, Israel swapped 429 prisoners in exchange for an Israeli businessman and the remains of three Israeli soldiers.) The Palestinians now have a tremendous interest in prisoner swaps since the Israelis have achieved the relative quiet of the past few years in part by arresting huge numbers of suspected terrorists and packing jails with more than 9,000 detainees. Securing the release of many of them, by negotiating the return of the Israeli corporal, would make heroes of Hamas. And it would do so at a time when ordinary Palestinians have been grumbling that they may have erred in electing the radical group since the government--bankrupt because of international boycotts--has gone five months without paying salaries to its 160,000 employees.

Hizballah too hopes to profit from aggression. Israel holds only three Lebanese prisoners, but the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, grandly noted that he also was making the release of Palestinian detainees a condition for freeing his Israeli captives, which would bring him and his group glory, both in the Arab world and Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps. And following the abduction with a rain of rockets on Israeli towns and villages may have bolstered the group's ability to intimidate Lebanon's government and force it to ignore the U.N. Security Council's demands that Hizballah's fighters be disarmed. Compared with Hizballah, Lebanon's national army is impotent.

•WHY ISRAEL FIGHTS

The Israelis are determined to show their adversaries that they aren't cowed. That has become clear in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's announcements that Israel will not negotiate for the return of its soldiers. Israeli officials have long talked of "changing the rules of the game," and Olmert unleashed the military to do just that, setting the price for aggression against Israel so high that its enemies would be deterred from acting up in the future.

Olmert may have been influenced by President Bush, both in his stance of "no negotiations with terrorists" and in his decision to retaliate harshly for the Hamas and Hizballah actions. The post-9/11 era has marked a new high in Israeli-U.S. relations, with Washington abandoning its past practice of criticizing Israel when it acts severely toward the Palestinians or other Arab parties. Starting with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli officials have taken to adopting Bush's war-on-terrorism rhetoric. Justice Minister Haim Ramon last week said Israel would treat Nasrallah as the U.S. treats Osama bin Laden.

In that context, the abduction of the soldiers was particularly combustible. As it is, such acts strike deep into Israel's soul. It is practically a sacred notion in the Israeli military that nobody is left behind. And because the nation has a citizen's army and Israel's population is so small, hostage taking is felt intimately; if it's not your son or your neighbor's son, it could be.