Prisoner swap?

The present is buried in the past, and past mistakes come back to haunt you. The current model for Hamas and Hizbollah is the fact that Israel released 400 Palestinian prisoners plus 39 Lebanese and 59 bodies in 2004 to Hizbollah, in exchange for the bodies of three dead IDF soldiers, previously captured and killed by them in a cross-border raid, and with them a former IDF Colonel and businessman, Elchanan Tenenbaum, who was apparently lured to Kuwait on the promise of a drug deal. When returned he was lucky not to get a long prison sentence for helping the enemy.
In fact, in the past 30 years, notwithstanding routine statements about not dealing with terrorists, Israel has released a total of 7,000 prisoners in exchange for 19 Israelis (nearly 400 per Israeli) and the bodiers of 8 others. If you were sitting on the Palestinian or Hizbollah side, you would look at these statisics and decide, "Hey, all we have to do to get our prisoners back, and become heroes to our people, is to mount a surprise cross-border raid, take some soldiers captive, and bingo! We know the Israelis will deal!" So the current situation in which Hamas in Gaza is holding IDF Cpl. Shalit, and Hizbollah in Lebanon is holding Sgts. Goldwasser and Regev, was initiated based on Israel's mistakes in the past. I don't care who they are, and this may sound harsh, there should be no dealing with terrorists, since it only encourages them to kidnap more Israelis. Only because they know they will get something outrageous for it do they specifically base their strategy on the capture of Israeli soldiers. If they knew that they would get nothing they wouldn't bother to do it.
Of course, there is a conflicting issue here, since the IDF's ethical policies means that they will never leave a fallen colleague on the battlefield, and they will do all they can to retrieve them if captured. But, originally these prisoner exchanges were first instituted by Israel after mothers put tremendous personal pressure on PM Rabin to get their sons back. Knowing how much value we place on the life of every individual soldier, the terrorists know they can exploit our humanity. But, the national interest must be placed above personal considerations. Certainly, I would want the Government to deal if it were my son captured, but that's not the point, its the State or its representatives, not me or any other related person who should decide. Certainly the media make much more fuss about the captured individual than the many more who lost their lives in the fighting, for example 8 others were killed in the same Hizbollah cross border attack on July 12 that captured the two soldiers, and noone remembers their names!
At first PM Olmert stated that he would not accept a ceasefire until the captives were released in Lebanon, but he didn't stick to that, then he stated that the IDF would not withdraw from Lebanon until the two captives were released, but he didn't stick to that either. He also stated that he would not meet with Pres Abbas of the PA until Shalit was released, but he abrogated that too. So far he has kept to the position that the prisoners in Lebanon must be released before Israel will release any prisoners in exchange, as enshrined in UN resolution 1701, that says that they must be released "unconditionally". Let's hope that he keeps to that! But, eventually one can expect that ca. 400 prisoners will be released for each Israeli captive, leading to the capture of more IDF soldiers in the future. Give the terrorists an incentive and they'll take it.