Israel Ratifies Agreement for Prisoner Swap With Hezbollah
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Cabinet ratified an Egyptian-mediated agreement with Lebanon’s Hezbollah that provides for the release of five Lebanese nationals jailed in Israel in exchange for the return of two Israeli soldiers.
The Cabinet voted 22-3 yesterday to go ahead with the swap, Prime Minister Olmert’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said. The exchange will take place today at the Rosh Hanikra crossing in northern Israel, an area that was to be closed to the press and public starting at midnight local time yesterday, the army said in an e-mail statement.
Israel will hand over “the five terrorists of Lebanese citizenship who are imprisoned in Israel, and the remains of 199 enemy combatants,” the army said. Those to be freed include Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese national who was convicted in the 1979 killings of a 4-year-old Israeli girl, her father, and two Israeli police officers.
The Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, were seized in a cross-border ambush by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah on July 12, 2006, setting off a monthlong war between Israel and gunmen from the group in southern Lebanon. Some 1,200 Lebanese and 159 Israelis were killed in the fighting. The two soldiers also may be dead, the Israeli government has said.
The ministers gave final approval to the exchange even as they rejected a report from Hezbollah on the fate of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad, the prime minister’s office said in a statement on its Web site. Israel will continue to seek information on the airman, who went missing in Lebanon in 1986, according to the statement.
Israel is also negotiating with the Palestinian Arab Hamas movement to free Gilad Shalit, a soldier seized outside the Gaza Strip three weeks before the abduction at the Israeli-Lebanese border. Hamas has said Mr. Shalit is alive and has provided letters and audiotapes from him to his family.
Housing Minister Zeev Boim voted against the exchange with Hezbollah, saying on Israel Radio it made Israel look weak and the Lebanese group victorious. “Hamas holds Shalit and no one will be surprised now if they raise the price of returning him,” he said.
