JERUSALEM – The Israeli Cabinet overwhelmingly agreed Sunday to a deal with Hezbollah to swap a notorious Lebanese prisoner for the bodies of two captured soldiers, the prime minister’s spokesman said.
The proposed deal would also needs the approval of the Lebanese militant’s group secretive, decision-making Shura Council.
The agreement had sparked a fierce public debate over whether Israel would be giving up too much or carrying out its highest commitment to its soldiers to do everything possible to bring them home if they fell into enemy hands.
The deal would have Hezbollah return two soldiers it captured in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a 34-day war. Israel would release Samir Kantar, imprisoned for a 1979 attack etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruelest in the nation’s history.
Hezbollah had offered no sign that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were alive and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them.
For the first time, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared on Sunday that the soldiers were dead. Before the vote, Olmert told his Cabinet that Israel has concluded that the two soldiers killed during the raid or shortly after.
“We know what happened to them,” Olmert said, according to a prepared statement given to the Cabinet and released by his office. “As far as we know, the soldiers Regev and Goldwasser are not alive.”
Goldwasser’s father, Shlomo, said he was not surprised by the declaration, but wanted proof the soldiers were dead.
“There have been assessments for a long time,” he said. “But none of this matters because it is not fact. … They were alive when they (were) kidnapped and no one has provided us with evidence to the contrary.”
The Mossad intelligence agency and the Shin Bet security service opposed the deal, officials said. Germany has been trying to mediate a prisoner exchange since Israel’s war with Lebanon ended in August 2006.
Kantar is serving multiple life terms in the infiltration attack on a northern Israeli town. Witnesses said Kantar — then 16 — shot Danny Haran in front of his 4-year-old daughter, then smashed her skull against a rock with his rifle butt, killing her, too.
During the attack, Haran’s wife accidentally smothered their 2-year-old daughter in a frantic attempt to keep her quiet so Kantar and his comrades wouldn’t find them. Two Israeli policemen also were killed. Kantar denies killing the 4-year-old.
Critics have argued that swapping bodies for Kantar would offer militant groups an even greater incentive to capture soldiers and less of a reason to keep captives alive.
The debate over the deal taps into a military ethos that runs deep within Israeli society, where most young men and many young women perform compulsory service. Soldiers go out to battle with the understanding they won’t be left behind in the field.
The controversy also has weighed the immediacy of the Regev and Goldwasser families’ anguish against the pain suffered by a family attacked nearly 30 years ago. The woman whose family was killed by Kantar, Smadar Haran Kaiser, has in the past opposed his release.
An aide to Public Security Minister Avi Dichter said Haran Kaiser gave Dichter a letter approving the deal.
Israeli newspapers splashed pictures of the soldiers, their families and military comrades on their front pages.
“Bring them home,” ran the headline of the Yediot Ahronot mass-circulation daily. “Look us in our teary eyes,” ran the headline in Maariv, under a picture of Goldwasser’s parents and Regev’s father.
A recent poll by Israel’s Dahaf Research Institute showed that 65 percent of those questioned said Kantar should be released in exchange for the two soldiers held by Hezbollah, even if it was not known whether they are dead or alive.
The survey of 500 people had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
The soldiers’ families have mounted a concerted public campaign to get the government to approve the deal. Family and friends demonstrated outside Olmert’s office while the ministers were deliberating.
Goldwasser’s wife, who has traveled the globe meeting with world leaders in an effort to bring her husband home, said troops would be less willing to fight for their country if they sensed their country had wavered in its commitment to its soldiers.
“If they won’t bring (the soldiers) back, I believe the message is to the people here is that the country is not going to stand for them, and this is why people in this country are not going to stand for this country,” Karnit Goldwasser told Associated Press Television News.
Some Cabinet ministers took the same view. “I believe in this deal with all my heart. There’s no room for hesitation, not to agree to the deal is to erase our obligation to bring back every soldier,” Cabinet Minister Meir Sheetrit said ahead of the meeting.
Other politicians were afraid the emotional appeals of the soldiers’ families could lead the government to bend sacred principles.
“If they are dead, I certainly oppose this deal,” dovish lawmaker Yossi Beilin told Israel Radio. “The principle must be releasing live prisoners for live hostages, and releasing bodies in return for the fallen.”
In addition to the two captured soldiers held in Lebanon, Israel is trying to win back a third soldier captured by Palestinian militants in a June 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.
Sgt. Gilad Schalit has sent letters and an audio tape to his parents and is believed to be alive, though he has not been seen since his capture and the Red Cross has not been permitted to visit him.
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