IN the hours before dawn on June 26, six young Palestinian militants silently dug a tunnel linking Gaza to flat land not far from an Israeli Army guard post. That morning, they infiltrated the backyard of their enemy, disabled an Israeli Merkava tank with grenades and shot dead two Jewish soldiers. More importantly, they brought back with them, through the tunnel, Gilad Shalit, a wounded Israeli corporal.

The kidnapping of Shalit became the reason