- Title: MIDEAST: Israel and Hezbollah carry out prisoner swap deal
- Date: 16th July 2008
- Summary: VARIOUS OF PALESTINIANS DANCING AND PLAYING MUSIC, CELEBRATING RELEASE OF FIVE LEBANESE PRISONERS
- Embargoed: 31st July 2008 13:00
- Keywords:
- Topics: International Relations
- Reuters ID: LVADHSZ8UW2P7M9ROIYJFIC334EL
- Story Text: Hezbollah handed the bodies of two Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross on Wednesday to be exchanged for Lebanese prisoners held by Israel in a deal viewed as a triumph by the Lebanese Shi'ite guerrilla group.
Many Israelis see it as a painful necessity, two years after the soldiers' capture sparked a 34-day war with Hezbollah that killed about 1,200 people in Lebanon and 159 Israelis.
Two black coffins were unloaded from a Hezbollah vehicle at a U.N.
peacekeeping base on the Israel-Lebanon border after a Hezbollah official, Wafik Safa, disclosed for the first time that army reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were dead.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) took the coffins to Israel. The Israeli army later said forensic teams had identified the cadavers as those of its missing men. Israeli generals visited Goldwasser and Regev families to notify them.
In a deal mediated by a U.N.-appointed German intelligence officer, Israel was to free Qantar and four other prisoners said by Hezbollah to be the last Lebanese captives in Israel.
If completed, the agreement will close a file that has motivated repeated Hezbollah attempts over the past quarter century to capture Israelis to use as bargaining counters.
Qantar had been serving a life prison term for the deaths of four Israelis, including a four-year-old girl and her father, in a 1979 Palestinian guerrilla attack on an Israeli town.
The fathers of the two Israelis soldiers earlier spoke of their anxiety prior to the release of the bodies.
"It was a very difficult night for us, few of us could not sleep, and a few of us slept for a few hours not more than that, and we have a long day ahead of us," said Zvi Regev.
Hezbollah's Safa said Israel had later handed over via the ICRC the bodies of eight Hezbollah fighters slain in the 2006 war, and those of four Palestinians, including Dalal Mughrabi, a woman guerrilla who led a 1978 raid on Israel.
The four were among the nearly 200 Arabs killed trying to attack Israel whose bodies are to be transferred to Lebanon as part of the exchange.
Hezbollah will return the remains of Israeli soldiers killed in south Lebanon.
Israel is also to free scores of Palestinian prisoners at a later date as a gesture to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Hezbollah has dubbed the exchange "Operation Radwan", in honour of "Hajj Radwan", or Imad Moughniyah, the group's military commander who was assassinated in Syria in February.
Yellow Hezbollah flags fluttered across south Lebanon and on the coastal highway from Naqoura to Beirut. "Liberation of the captives: a new dawn for Lebanon and Palestine," a banner read.
Israel denounced the planned festivities.
"Samir Qantar is a brutal murderer of children and anybody celebrating him as a hero is trampling on basic human decency," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev.
The European Union hailed the prisoner deal as a positive step by both sides. "But today's exchange is also a step towards the full implementation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1701 and therefore contributes to regional stability," said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
Resolution 1701, which ended hostilities in the 2006 war, called for the unconditional release of the Israeli soldiers and a solution for the issue of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel.
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said the prisoner swap strengthened its own hand in demanding freedom for hundreds of prisoners in exchange for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
"It represented a victory to the line of resistance and to the line of steadfastness and the rejection of giving concessions in the fight against the Israeli occupation," said the Hamas leader, Ismael Haniyeh, speaking at the house Samir Qantar's mother in Gaza City.
Israeli President Shimon Peres set the prisoner swap in motion on Tuesday (July 15) by pardoning Qantar, reviled in Israel for his role in the 1979 attack. Qantar was aged 17 at the time.
Olmert had described Qantar as the last bargaining chip for word on Israeli airman Ron Arad, missing since he bailed out over Lebanon in 1986.
Israel said a report supplied by Hezbollah on Arad as part of the swap had failed to clarify his fate.
The other Lebanese prisoners being freed along with Qantar, a Druze, were named as Maher Qorani, Mohammad Srour, Hussein Suleiman and Khodr Zeidan.
They were to be welcomed with rallies and fireworks in Lebanon, which declared a public holiday. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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