TEL AVIV, Israel — After numerous failed rescue attempts and a cease-fire agreement, Israel will try to negotiate a prisoner swap to secure the release of the two soldiers whose kidnapping by Hezbollah last month set off the war.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Olmert appointed a former top security official, Ofer Dekel, to work out how the two captured soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, can be returned home safely.

Mr. Dekel, once the deputy chief of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet, also will attempt to obtain the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was captured by Hamas in June in a crossborder raid that provoked Israeli incursions into Gaza.

Two Israeli government sources said yesterday that Mr. Dekel will work on a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, which until now the Olmert government has flatly rejected.

The leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, also is seeking to negotiate the release of Samir Kunter, a Lebanese Druze who shot a Nahariya resident, Danny Haran, in 1979 in front of his daughter, Einat, 4. After killing her father, Kunter smashed Einat Haran’s face with his rifle butt.

Jerusalem believes it has a great deal of bargaining power, a senior Israeli official said. “Today, Israel has more assets [Hezbollah prisoners and bodies] at the end of this conflict which could help bring about the release of this prisoners,” the official told The New York Sun on condition of anonymity. “We’ve got people alive and we’ve got bodies.”

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said the official view of his government accords with U.N. resolution 1701, passed over the weekend. “The U.N. Security Council resolution says Hezbollah will have to release the soldiers unconditionally,” he said.

The fate of the three Israeli soldiers still resonates here, in a nation reeling from a cease-fire few political leaders outside Mr. Olmert’s Cabinet doubt will lead to a resumption of war in the future.

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said he did not vote to endorse the cease-fire on Sunday because of the fate of the prisoners.Mr. Olmert said he was obliged at a Cabinet meeting Sunday to drop his demand that any cessation of hostilities be conditional upon the return of the soldiers because he did not want to give Hezbollah the ability to veto the overall deal.

Mr. Olmert’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has defended the cease-fire deal on the grounds that Israel managed to extract a written commitment to return the soldiers in a resolution clause about Lebanese prisoners.

But the U.N.-brokered deal has come under attack here because the fate of the prisoners only comes in the preamble of resolution 1701, not in its operative language.

“According to U.N. practice based on the determination of the International Court of Justice, the preambular language of U.N. Security Council resolutions is not binding; only the operative language actually creates legal responsibility,” a former Likud Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, told the Sun yesterday.

The Jewish state has traded prisoners with Hezbollah in the past. On January 29, 2004, Israel exchanged 430 Palestinian Arab and Lebanese prisoners for the bodies of three of its soldiers and a hostage, the Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum.

At the time, the German government acted as negotiator. The Lebanese and Palestinian Arab prisoners were flown to Germany under the conditions of the deal.

A possible interlocutor now is the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana. Mr. Solana said on Sunday that he was working to secure the release of the soldiers.

One European diplomat who requested anonymity said yesterday that the French were also in contact with Hezbollah about a deal to return Messrs. Goldwasser and Regev. For more than a week, the diplomat said, the French have privately assured Israel that they can deliver the two soldiers alive.