Two contradicting views have been floating recently between Lebanon and occupied Palestine over an anticipated exchange deal between Hezbollah and Israel.
There are some who believe that a swap deal will take place before the end of this month, while others don’t rule out such deal, but believe that it will not be implemented in the near future.
“The prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah will not take place in the next few days”, the Israeli Defense Ministry official said Wednesday. “In any case, such an exchange will not take place until the cabinet meets to approve the release of Samir Kintar, whose freedom still depends on a 2004 cabinet decision to release him only in exchange for information on missing Israeli navigator Ron Arad”.
The schedule for the swap is still unclear, though it may possibly come next week, and no date has been set. It is also not clear whether such a swap would take place at the Naqura border crossing, or whether, as in previous exchanges, it would be carried out in Germany, with two airplanes taking off at the same time, one from Tel Aviv and the other from Beirut, on their way to a German military airport.
Israel has stated that it will release four Hezbollah fighters who were taken captive during the July 2006 War, and another eight martyrs’ bodies.
Nevertheless, Israel may release a few dozen Palestinian prisoners at a later date. Ofer Dekel, the prime minister’s representative for negotiations with Hezbollah, returned on Wednesday from a private vacation in Paris, though he also dealt with the exchange talks there. He may also have met with the UN mediator involved in the talks, German Gerhard Konrad.
Claims roamed on Wednesday that Israel had already started exhuming the bodies of the Lebanese to be returned as part of the deal. Dekel made it clear to the two families of the captured soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser Dekel, at a meeting in his Tel Aviv office that he had not received any new information. He explained that it is likely that only during the actual swap will they find out whether the two are dead or alive. He informed the families of the possible schedule for the deal.
Goldwasser’s father, Shlomo, told Haaretz that a dramatic step over the weekend had been ruled out. The families confirmed reports of the meeting, but refused to reveal details, describing the meeting as a short update.
On the other hand, an Israeli security source confirmed few days ago that a “swap deal is expected to take place in the near future, possibly even by late next week”. Lebanese media referred to a number of possible dates for an exchange, with Friday June 20 as the earliest, and Wednesday June 25 being the latest.
An Israeli senior political source told Haaretz earlier that Israel is still waiting for a final response from Hezbollah and “nothing is final yet.”
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said that the reports published by the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, suggesting a prisoner exchange deal is expected as early as next week, were “inaccurate,” adding it is unlikely the deal will be finalized in such a short time.
As for Ron Arad, the missing Israeli air force navigator: Eliad Shraga, head of the Born Free organization, told Israeli daily Ynet that “every possible mistake has been made. Hezbollah has beaten Israel big-time. They’ve been able to get every last one of our bargaining chips, kidnap more soldiers and now we have nothing left. Promises must be kept. We had to give (Mustafa) Dirani and (Abdel Karim) Obeid in the last prisoner swap – they were the best bargaining chips we had on Ron’s case. To make this wrong a little more right, they told us the deal would have a second stage – information about Ron in exchange for Kintar. It’s been four year. Kintar is going home and we still have no new information about Ron.”
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