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Breakthrough Exchange

German Spy Brokered Deal between Israel and Hezbollah

By Christoph Schult and Holger Stark

Part 2: 'We Aren't Any Closer to a Final Deal'

AFP

Israeli officers retrieve the body of Gabriel Dawit, returned during the exchange deal between Israel and Hezbollah.

The first attempt at rapprochement between the two sides since the war took place around 5 p.m. on Oct. 15 at the Rosh Hanikra border post. The Israeli delegation first handed over the remains of two Lebanese fighters and a seriously ill Hezbollah militia member who had been captured.

The Shiite militia then returned the body of the Ethiopian and handed the BND agent a missive that the Israelis have been waiting for for a long time: a letter written from a Lebanese prison by the missing pilot Ron Arad, who disappeared in 1986. The German middleman flew to Israel last Wednesday to give it to Olmert’s negotiator Dekel.

The note from Arad, who has become an Israeli national hero and is likely long since dead, dates from 1988. At that point, he was still being held by Hezbollah, but later he was probably given to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. His actual fate has never been determined.

The letter does little to explain what happened to Arad, but it’s evidence that Hezbollah has at least some pieces to the mystery squirreled away. Nasrallah likes to speak of “samples,” while slyly pointing out he’s done “everything imaginable” to solve the case. Now, he believes, it’s Israel’s turn to reciprocate by releasing the Lebanese national Samir Kuntar.

Considered a freedom fighter in Beirut, Kuntar is seen as an heartless murderer in Israel. In 1979, he killed one family’s father and daughter in the northern Israeli port city of Nahariya. The mother managed to hide herself and her younger daughter from Kuntar. However, she tragically suffocated the child while trying to keep her quiet.

Nasrallah is also calling for the release of four other militia members besides Kuntar. Hezbollah has essentially given up its demand that around 1,000 prisoners, mostly Palestinians, be freed from Israeli jails. But the name Kuntar alone is contentious enough to block a wider deal for the foreseeable future, making it unlikely that the small success will be quickly followed by a bigger one.

Prime Minister Olmert has learned from the mistakes made during the war in Lebanon. More than anything, he doesn’t want to give the relatives of the abducted soldiers a sense of false hope. “We aren’t any closer to a final deal,” Israeli negotiator Dekel told SPIEGEL last Thursday.

Jerusalem doesn’t want to surrender an inch. Dekel even rules out the possibility of exchanging Kuntar for the two soldiers. “Kuntar isn’t part of any such deal,” he says, explaining that a 2004 offer whereby Kuntar would be released once Hezbollah clears up the fate of Ron Arad still stands. Although top Israeli intelligence officials now believe that Nasrallah probably doesn’t know where Arad is, Dekel is not backing away from Israel’s hard-line position: “We will not do without information about Ron Arad.”

Nasrallah is even less willing to compromise. He hasn’t even delivered proof that the two Israeli reservists are still alive. “The Israelis will receive nothing without giving something in return,” says Kuntar’s brother Bassam. He’s convinced that Hezbollah will soon bring Samir home: “I have complete faith in Nasrallah.”

But his hopes could soon be dashed. A possible explanation for Nasrallah's stubborn refusal to prove the soldiers are alive is not because he doesn't want to, but because he can’t. According to a secret internal investigation by the Israeli army, the two soldiers were “at least” seriously wounded. One of them probably died of his wounds, and it is possible that both are already dead.

Tomer Weinberg witnessed the abduction of the two soldiers on July 12, 2006. He was patrolling the Israeli-Lebanese border with Goldwasser and Regev in an Israeli army Humvee vehicle. As Hezbollah opened fire, he managed to hide in a roadside ditch. His arm, leg and lung were pierced by three bullets. He stayed there while the Hezbollah fighters took his comrades. “I didn’t hear a thing, no screams, nothing,” the 27-year-old recalls, while still wanting to believe the two are alive.

But even if they aren’t, it’s always been Israeli policy to do all it can to retrieve the remains of its dead soldiers. Jerusalem has repeatedly released terrorists for this reason. Prime Minister Olmert telephoned last week with Smadar Haran-Kaiser, the mother who survived Kuntar’s bloodbath. She will not oppose the release of the man who murdered her family.

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