At the beginning of the week Israel and the Hizbullah
announced that the prisoner swap deal that had been talked
about for months was finally closed. The key parts are
scheduled to take place on Thursday.
Israel is slated to receive Israeli businessman Elchanan
Tannenbaum and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers kidnapped
by Hizbullah in October 2000. However it was reported on
Tuesday that Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has
demanded the release of additional prisoners, thus raising
questions whether the deal will go through at this time.
The Israel Prisons Service published the list of 462
prisoners to be released in the prisoner exchange deal with
Hizbullah on Monday night. The list includes 31 prisoners
from Arab countries, 371 Palestinian prisoners and 60
administrative detainees. The bodies of 59 Lebanese killed in
clashes with Israeli forces will also be returned.
The criteria set by the Israeli cabinet are that only
prisoners with less than two years still to serve and without
"blood on their hands" will be released. However, Israel did
promise Hizbullah that only security prisoners, as opposed to
ordinary criminals, will be included in the deal.
Soldiers on Monday were exhuming the remains of 59 Lebanese
militants buried in northern Israel as part of the prisoner
swap. The exhumation of the bodies is expected to continue on
Tuesday. The cemetery, at the Amiad army base north of the
Kinneret, was used for Lebanese killed in clashes with
Israeli soldiers.
Steven Josef Smyrek, a German native who converted to Islam
and was jailed after coming to Israel on a Hizbullah suicide
mission in 1997, plans to rejoin the Lebanese militia upon
his release, according to a German journalist who interviewed
him.
Israel always has paid a heavy price in prisoner-exchange
deals. After the Sinai Campaign of 1956, Israel released more
than 5,500 Egyptian soldiers in return for four Israeli
soldiers. At the end of the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel released
6,708 Arab soldiers and civilians in exchange for a handful
of Israeli prisoners and the bodies of fallen Israeli
soldiers.
However, all those were deals with legitimate governments at
the end of conventional wars. The dilemmas began when
terrorist organizations became involved.
On April 4, 1978, six Israeli soldiers and a civilian
mistakenly entered an area controlled by PLO terrorists in
the Rashidiya region in southern Lebanon. Four soldiers were
killed and one soldier was captured alive. The soldier was
released almost a year later, in exchange for 76 terrorists
held in Israeli prisons. Since 1983, there have been eight
prisoner exchanges.
The Israeli soldiers in the current deal, Benny Avraham, Adi
Avitan and Omar Souad, were on a patrol mission along
Israel's border with Lebanon on Oct. 7, 2000, when they were
ambushed by Hizbullah terrorists dressed as U.N.
observers.
The terrorists dragged the soldiers into Lebanon. A year
later, Israel officially declared that the soldiers had been
killed during the kidnapping.
Tannenbaum, the only Israeli captive in the current deal who
is known to be alive, is a controversial figure. Tannenbaum,
a reserve colonel, was seized in Arab territory after having
traveled there on a supposed business trip, but the exact
details of his capture are unclear.
Tannenbaum had serious financial difficulties in recent
years. It appears that his capture was a gamble to make a big
pot of money and he fell into a trap. Many asked why Israel
was releasing security prisoners in exchange for a civilian
who might have become a hostage because of his own
mistakes.
The outstanding puzzle is Ron Arad, the Israel Air Force
navigator who went missing after bailing out from his failing
Phantom jet over Lebanon in October 1986. Arad is believed to
have fallen into the hands of the Lebanese Shi'ite
organization Amal.
Successive Israeli governments have tried to locate him. At
one time, he is believed to have been held by Shi'ite
activist Mustafa Dirani, who claimed that Hizbullah had in
turn captured Arad from him and passed him onto the Iranians.
Israel kidnapped Dirani and Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid as
bargaining cards for Arad, but to no avail. Both men were to
be included in this week's deal.
As part of a reported second phase of this deal, Israel hopes
to receive information about Arad in exchange for the release
of another high-profile Arab prisoner, one who did murder
Israelis. Israeli officials have claimed that this
arrangement held the best promise of getting information
about Arad, as well as its obvious benefits to Tannenbaum and
the families of the dead soldiers.
