Final stages of exchange for prisoners and killed between Hizbullah and Israel
Lebanon-Israel, Politics, 6/25/1998

The final stages of the exchange deal between Hizbullah and Israel are due to take place on Friday, or at the latest on Sunday after Israel identifies beyond any doubt through DNA tests the body of Itamar Ilya, Israeli sources said.

Ilya was the naval commando unit soldier who died in the aborted raid on a Hizbullah base in Lebanon last September. In the raid, 16 Israeli soldiers were killed in what was described as the worst fiasco the Israeli navy ever faced. Ilya's body was expected to arrive in Israel on Thursday night aboard a Red Cross flight from Beirut.

Other Israeli sources said the French government had supplied the plane, which will fly back to Lebanon the bodies of forty Hizbullah fighters who were killed in clashes in south Lebanon either with Israeli troops or with Israeli-backed militia of south Lebanon. Upon the confirmed identification of Ilya's body, another plan will fly 60 Hizbullah members who had been held by Israel either in Al Khayam prison in south Lebanon or inside Israel itself. Among those to be released is Hizbullah member Mohammed Maqdad who arrived in Israel in 1996 and smuggled with him sophisticated explosives and intended to carry out a series of attacks in Israel. Among the bodies to be returned to Lebanon will be that of Hadi Nasrallah, son of Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who fell in a clash with Israeli troops late last year.

Neither Sheikh Abdul Karim Obeid nor Mustafa Dirani will be released in the present deal. Israeli special forces kidnaped both men, senior members of Hizbullah, in the late 80s and in mid-90s. Israel believed they possessed information that would help lead to the missing navigator and since then has rejected a number of appeals for their release. Israel hopes that they will finally be swapped with Ron Arad, sources in Tel Aviv said.

Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai approved plans for the first stage of the deal - exhuming the remains of the 40 individuals buried in Israel and expressed hopes that the Lebanese government "will stand up to their side of the deal. If everything happens as it should, we shall continue the process."

The exchange deal was struck two weeks ago but the plan was not undertaken. Israeli sources claimed it was Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri who opposed the deal out of fear that it would foster both Amal and Hizbullah in the upcoming municipal elections on Lebanon. Negotiations for the deal between the two sides began several months ago, after it was clear that Ilya's body was in Lebanon.

At the start Hizbullah demanded the release of 100 prisoners, including Mustafa Dirani and Sheikh Obeid. Israel's return offer was 30 prisoners for the remains. A number of difficulties arose not only in talks between Israel and Hizbullah but also between the party itself and the Lebanese government. Yet Israeli sources quoted officials in the Defense Ministry as saying that the deal had been reached within a relatively short period of time.

Over the years Israel has made a number of deals for exchange of prisoners and remains. The most significant of those were the following:

3/14/79: 76 Palestinian and Arab commandos were released to Lebanon, in exchange for reservist Avraham Amram who was captured when his pickup truck drove out of Israeli-occupied territory, near Tyre, at the height of the Israeli blitz into Lebanon in March 1978 in what was known as the Litani Operation.

3/26/83: Israel released 4,700 prisoners from the Ansar detention camp in south Lebanon plus another 65 from Israel, in exchange for 8 soldiers who were taken prisoner in Hamdon, Lebanon, in September 1982. Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-General Command held two, while PLO mainstream Fatah movement held the rest.

5/20/85: "The Jibril Deal" was struck in which three Israeli soldiers held by the PFLP-GC since the Lebanon war, were exchanged for 1,150 prisoners held in Israel.

9/12/91: The body of soldier Samir Assad was returned to Israel in exchange for a permit allowing the return of Ali Mohammed, a senior member of the Nayef Hawatmeh's DFLP who was deported from the Occupied Territories into Lebanon in 1986.

7/1/96: The bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Rahamim Elsheikh and Yosef Fink, were returned to Israel from Lebanon in exchange for the remains of 123 Palestinians and Lebanese who were killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Within that deal, Hizbullah released 19 soldiers from the Israeli-backed SLA (South Lebanon Army) and the SLA released in return 20 Hizbullah members who were in SLA custody.

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