Half an hour later I spoke to a veteran Israeli journalist in Jerusalem, who observed morosely that ‘the market price for prisoner exchanges just went through the roof’.

Never before have so many jailed Palestinians been swapped for a single captive, he pointed out, and in contrast to Israel’s previous refusal to release anyone with innocent blood on their hands, those freed yesterday included men and women convicted of atrocious attacks on ‘soft’ targets like hotels, pizza parlours and discotheques.