and now there's a catch 22 situation:

Three sides hostage to soldier's abduction
Ed O'Loughlin, smh, June 30, 2006 (excerpts)

PALESTINIAN militants, having achieved their dream of capturing an Israeli soldier alive, cannot now release with him without getting something substantial from Israel in return. Otherwise they will lose face. The Israeli Government, which, like every other government in the world, likes to say it will never negotiate with terrorists, cannot give in to demands for it to free some or all of at least 8000 Palestinian prisoners in return for Corporal Gilad Shalit. Otherwise it will lose face.

The Palestinian Authority's moderate chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, cannot use his supposed control over the Palestinian security forces to have them find and free the captured tank gunner from his hiding place in Gaza. To do so would be to confirm the accusation often levelled at the Fatah party by rival groups during the 12 years that it controlled the authority: that it works for Israel, not for the Palestinians. And then Mr Abbas would probably lose more than his face.

As for the authority's new ruling party, Hamas, nearly all of its ministers and parliamentarians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem are in Israeli prisons, having been rounded up on Wednesday night in what Israel claimed was not a hostage-taking exercise but an investigation into terrorist offences.

But having abducted most of the authority's political leaders, the shaky new government of the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, will find it difficult to release them, or to pull its tanks out of Rafah - or to halt its bombing of civilian infrastructure in Gaza - without being able to show its people that it got something in return. Otherwise it will lose face.

And so on and dismally on...