Region | Palestinian Territories
Israeli prisoner swap 'shows Hezbollah's power'
Hezbollah says the Israeli government's approval of a prisoner swap shows its strength.
- AP
- Published: 21:38 June 29, 2008
Beirut/Occupied Jerusalem: Hezbollah says the Israeli government's approval of a prisoner swap shows its strength.
Hezbollah's Al Manar TV has quoted a senior official, executive council chief Hashim Safieddine, as saying the swap also shows that Hezbollah's word is supreme.
Bassam Kantar, brother of Lebanon's longest held prisoner in Israel, Samir Kantar, also praised Hezbollah's 2006 capture of the two Israeli soldiers.
Kantar told Al Manar TV the return of Lebanese prisoners from Israel shows that the "resistance is ready".
Hezbollah's comments came after Israel's Cabinet voted overwhelmingly yesterday in favour of an emotionally charged deal to swap Samir Kantar for the bodies of two soldiers declared earlier in the day to be dead.
Cross-border raid
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Hezbollah fighters captured Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in a July 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious, month-long war.
In return for their bodies, the Cabinet agreed to release Samir Kantar, a Lebanese fighter imprisoned for nearly 30 years for an attack etched in the Israeli psyche, and a number of other prisoners.
Ahead of the vote, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two soldiers were dead, killed during the raid or shortly after.
In exchange for the soldiers' bodies, the Cabinet was asked to agree to give up Kantar, who is serving multiple life terms after a 1979 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.
The Cabinet debated the deal for nearly six hours before the vote. The deal to free Kantar for the bodies of the soldiers was approved by 22-3, said Olmert's spokesman, Jacob Galanti.
In addition to the bodies, Israel will receive a report on a missing Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986, and body parts of other soldiers.
In addition to Kantar, Lebanon will receive four imprisoned Hezbollah fighters, a dozen bodies, most of them Hezbollah fighters, and an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners. Hezbollah had demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
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