Israel ponders deal to bring dead soldiers home

Israel’s government gathered today to vote on an emotionally charged deal to swap a notorious Lebanese prisoner for two Israeli soldiers captured two years ago – and declared for the first time to be dead.

The Israeli Cabinet was expected to approve the deal with the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group, which has 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 Israeli soldiers it captured in a 2006 cross-border raid that sparked a vicious 34-day war. In return, Israel would release Samir Kantar, a Lebanese guerrilla imprisoned for nearly 30 years for an attack etched in the Israeli psyche as one of the cruellest in the nation’s history.

Appealing to his Cabinet to approve the deal, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said for the first time that Israel has concluded the two captured soldiers – Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev – were killed after they were captured by Hezbollah in July 2006.

Hezbollah had offered no sign that Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were alive and the Red Cross was never allowed to see them.

“We know what happened to them,” Mr 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.”

Evidence suggests they died in the raid in which they were captured or shortly after, he said, urging ministers to approve the deal.

Kantar is serving multiple life terms for an infamous 1979 infiltration attack on an Israeli town that killed a young father and his 4-year-old daughter. During the attack, the man’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.

Israel’s military chief of staff, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, the commander of the Shin Bet security service and other defence officials briefed ministers before the vote.

Officials said the Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs opposed the deal, while the military chief, Lt Gen Gabi Ashkenazi, has said he hoped the soldiers would come home soon.

The debate over whether to trade an infamous attacker for two soldiers believed to be dead 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, though she has kept a low profile during the latest debate.

“There is no doubt that today’s discussion has special weight and is exceptionally sensitive in terms of its national and moral implications,” Mr Olmert said at the start of the Cabinet meeting.

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 Mr Goldwasser’s parents and Mr Regev’s father.

A recent poll by Israel’s Dahaf Research Institute showed that 65% 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 soldiers’ families have mounted a concerted public campaign to get the government to approve the deal. Family and friends demonstrated outside Mr Olmert’s office while the ministers were deliberating.