ISRAEL/LEBANON: Israel and Hezbollah complete limited prisoners exchange

Israel and Hezbollah complete limited prisoners exchange. Israel transfers two bodies and one wounded Hezbollah militant to Lebanon and receives the body an Israeli man that was swept to Lebanese shore after he had drowned. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged on Monday (October 15) the remains of an Israeli civilian for a captive Lebanese guerrilla and the bodies of two comrades in a U.N.-brokered deal. The swap could bolster U.N. efforts to secure the release of two Israeli soldiers whose capture triggered last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah and Lebanese prisoners held in Israeli jails. Lebanese sources and Israeli officials said Hezbollah handed over the remains of Gabriel Dwait, an Ethiopian immigrant who drowned in January 2005. A Lebanese source said his body had been washed to the Lebanese coast where fishermen found it and handed it over to Hezbollah. "Today we completed an exchange with the Hezbollah and I want to thank the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross for helping to make that happen. What happen today is a model, is an example of what must happen in the near future: We want to see all the Israeli MIA's, all those Israelis being held in Lebanon released expeditiously by the Hezbollah. We are committed as a government to do what must be done to bring about that release," Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev told Reuters. Israel freed prisoner Hassan Naim Aqil, a Hezbollah fighter captured during the war and handed over the bodies of guerrillas Ali Wizwaz and Mohammed Damashqiah who died in the fighting. In addition to the civilian's body, Israel received "additional information about other cases" of missing Israelis, an Israeli official said without giving any further details. Officials from the U.N. and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) facilitated the exchange at the frontier Lebanese town of Naqoura. A Lebanese source said the move was a goodwill gesture from both sides engaged in indirect talks via a U.N.-appointed mediator who is trying to broker the wider prisoner exchange. Several Israeli soldiers have been missing in Lebanon since the 1980s and are presumed dead. But there had been no previous report that an Israeli civilian was missing. Hezbollah still holds Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who it seized in July 2006. Their abductions triggered the 34-day war with Israel. The U.N.-appointed mediator, believed to be a German intelligence officer, is working on a deal to get the soldiers exchanged for Lebanese and other prisoners. There has been no word on whether the two soldiers are alive and, if so, on their condition. The swap also came four days after Germany said it would grant early release to an Iranian and a Lebanese who were given life prison sentences for the 1992 assassination of a group of dissident Kurdish leaders at a restaurant in Berlin. Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel last exchanged prisoners in 2004 when Israel released more than 400 Lebanese and other Arab prisoners for an Israeli businessman and the remains of three soldiers.

ITN Source | October 16, 2007

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