Prisoner Trade With Hezbollah Brings Mixed Feelings for Israelis

In a desolate little cemetery with graves marked only by numbers, Israeli soldiers from a special rabbinical unit on Monday began digging up the bodies of Lebanese fighters whose remains are to be repatriated as part of a prisoner exchange later this week.

Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group announced the agreement over the weekend, after nearly four years of contentious negotiations that moved ahead even as the two sides traded cross-border blows.

Like others in the past, this exchange is a lopsided one, reflecting Israel’s deeply held battlefield ethic of going to tremendous lengths to win back captive Israeli soldiers or citizens, or their remains.

Israel will hand over the bodies of 59 Lebanese fighters and receive the remains of three soldiers who were abducted by Hezbollah during a border firefight in 2000. Hezbollah will relinquish captive businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum, and in exchange secure freedom for 436 Arab prisoners, most of them Palestinian.

Because Israel and Hezbollah have no direct dealings other than battling each other, Germany is to serve as a staging ground for part of the swap. A German mediator helped hammer out the agreement, under which a German national held by Israel will be freed as well.

Since the terms of the exchange were announced, Israelis have wrestled with mixed feelings. Public opinion polls have suggested that they are evenly split over whether the prisoner swap is a good idea, or will encourage Hezbollah to keep trying to abduct Israelis.

“There’s no room for joy here,” said veteran left-of-center politician Shimon Peres. “We paid a high price because we are more sensitive to human life than Hezbollah is.”

“The decision was very, very difficult,” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told a group in Tel Aviv. “But I believe it was the correct one.”

The final days before the planned handover Thursday are wrenching for the families of the three Israeli soldiers, who -- based on intelligence information -- have been declared dead by the Israeli military. They were thought to have been alive, though gravely wounded, when captured.

In Israel, there was a national outpouring of revulsion Monday over statements made a day earlier by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, who held a rare news conference in Beirut.

Asked to confirm that the Israeli soldiers were dead, Nasrallah smiled broadly and said that would soon be known.

“I don’t let this evil man disturb my peace,” Efrat Avraham, whose brother Benjamin is one of the three soldiers, told Israel Radio.

It is to be a less than happy homecoming for Tannenbaum, the abducted Israeli businessman, who is under suspicion of engaging in drug deals at the time he was taken captive, according to Israeli media. His family told news outlets that they had been informed by authorities that Tannenbaum would face -- at the very least -- a lengthy interrogation by the Israeli security services soon after his return.

In another twist, Lebanese guerrilla chieftain Mustafa Dirani, who is to be freed as part of the deal, was scheduled to appear in a Tel Aviv court today to testify in a lawsuit he filed against the state of Israel, claiming he was raped by his Israeli interrogators. Dirani is seeking $1.4 million in damages.

Israel intended to publish today a list of the 400 Palestinian prisoners to be freed, to give citizens a chance to block a particular release. Israel said none had “blood on their hands” -- the Israeli terminology for anyone who carried out an attack that resulted in Israeli deaths.