Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said yesterday that the return of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas is far off, dashing hopes that the latest deal with the guerrilla group would pave the way for a bigger prisoner swap.
Israel and Hezbollah swapped bodies and a prisoner across the heavily guarded Lebanese-Israeli border on Monday. Although the deal was small in scale, its success was widely seen as improving the chances of further exchanges involving the two Israeli soldiers -- Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev -- whose capture sparked a 34-day war last year.
Olmert also said it would take time to bring home a third soldier, Gilad Shalit, who is being held by Hamas-affiliated militants in the Gaza Strip.
PHOTO: AFP
"Yesterday we passed a certain stage of the process but unfortunately as I said, the process of returning Udi and Eldad in the north and Gilad in the south is long," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashdod.
Hezbollah has repeated the two soldiers would be freed only in exchange for freedom of all Lebanese prisoners held in Israel.
Monday's exchange, the fourth between Hezbollah and Israel in recent years, took place in the evening at Naqoura on the Mediterranean coastline on the heavily guarded border.
An official of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Beirut said the organization acted as an intermediary in swapping the bodies of the two Lebanese with the body of the Israeli civilian.
Israel's government said the exchange was linked to efforts to win freedom of the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah a year ago.
Olmert's office said in a statement said the two Lebanese militants were killed in the war last summer and that the Hezbollah captive was released for medical reasons.
The state-run news agency in Beirut identified the prisoner as Hassan Naim Akil, a Hezbollah fighter captured during last year's war.
A photographer saw Akil crossing the border sitting in a black Mercedes in between two civilians. The man, with a gray bushy beard, was peering out of the window and smiling.
Israeli TV stations said the body of the Israeli citizen handed over Monday was a Jewish immigrant from Ethiopia named Gabriel Dwait, who drowned in 2005.
The swap followed the release last week of a German-Israeli detained by Lebanese authorities on suspicions of espionage.
Israel's Channel 10 TV reported that Israel received information as part of the deal, but a gag order prevented release of details.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops raided the West Bank city of Nablus before dawn yesterday, and two Palestinians were shot and killed in the ensuing violence, Palestinian witnesses and doctors said.
Troops patrolled the Old City, taking up points on roofs and detaining at least five suspected militants, the witnesses said. At least two exchanges of fire broke out, and three gunmen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades militia were injured, two seriously, the group said.
One later died of his wounds, doctors said.
A Palestinian man, 70, was shot just as he left his house in the area and later died of his wounds, his family and doctors said. It was not immediately clear if there was an exchange of fire at the time.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion