Bennett hints Israel should kidnap Hamas members as bargaining chips

A top minister is calling for Israel to reprise policies that included kidnapping troops from enemy countries in order to gain the release of people and soldiers’ remains being held captive in Gaza.

Without directly calling for Israel to begin kidnapping members of Hamas, Education Minister Naftali Bennett says Israel needs to go on the offensive to get assets that the terror group will want back.

“We need to go on an operational offensive to hurt Hamas and create assets,” the head of the hawkish Jewish Home party says in an interview with Walla news. “We knew how to do it in the ’50s and kidnap Jordanians, in the ’70s the Sayeret Matkal unit kidnapped Syrian officers in Lebanon. We need to return to the spirit of those initiatives and aggressiveness.”

In 1972 Israel kidnapped five Syrian officers and traded them for the return of pilots.

Hamas is currently holding the remains of two soldiers killed in the 2014 war and three living civilians. Efforts to gain their release have broken down in recent days, and officials, including Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, have urged a retreat from the policy of releasing prisoners in swap deals.