My feeling all along has been that the Israeli's should have given the arabs a horrible ultimatum; that is, if Gilad wasn't returned after a short period of time (say, 5 hours), then the Israeli's would have done something very unkind to the arabs. For example, they could have bulldozed houses down and they could "rationalize" it by saying that they were looking for Gilad.
Of course, my idea has holes in it. Because then the arabs could have said, "If you bulldoze one more house down, then we'll kill Gilad."
If the Jews weren't a decent people, then, of course, the whole arab problem would have been solved a long time ago. And this unfortunately is why, when it comes to Gilad, the arabs have the upper hand even though they are weaker.