The Israeli Cabinet overwhelmingly approved an emotionally charged deal yesterday to trade a Lebanese militant convicted in an infamous 1979 attack for two Israeli soldiers captured by Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrilla group and believed to be dead.
The swap is due to take place today under UN auspices at a seaside border crossing.
Hezbollah has given no evidence that soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev are alive and has not allowed the Red Cross to see them since they were captured on July 12, 2006, in a cross-border raid.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet last month that Israel thinks the men did not survive.
The deal, approved in a 22-3 vote, reflects the country’s deep moral commitment to its soldiers that they will never be left behind in the field. It also will close a painful chapter from Israel’s inconclusive war against Hezbollah, which was sparked by the soldiers’ capture.
Zvi Regev, Eldad’s father, said he was holding out hope his son might still be alive.
“I really hope this nightmare will end tomorrow,” he told Israel Radio. “We will accept whatever will be. We need to be strong and accept it for better or for worse.”
Critics have said that by trading bodies for prisoners, Israel is giving militants little incentive to keep captured soldiers alive.
And although polls suggest a large majority of Israelis support the exchange, many Israelis were anguished at the prospect that killer Samir Kantar would go free.
Kantar, then 16, was one of four militants who made their way in a rubber dinghy from Lebanon to Israel’s northern shore in 1979 and attacked an apartment building in the coastal city of Nahariya, 8km from the Lebanese border.
Smadar Haran, woken by the gunfire and grenades exploding outside the building, fled into a crawl space in her apartment with her two-year-old daughter and a neighbor. Her husband, Danny, grabbed their four-year-old daughter, Einat, hoping to dash outside to an underground bomb shelter, when the attackers burst into their home.
Danny and Einat were dragged down to the beach. Witnesses said Kantar shot Danny Haran in front of his child, then smashed her skull against a rock with his rifle butt, killing her, too. Kantar, who was recruited by a militant Palestinian faction, denies killing the girl and has never expressed remorse over the incident.
The younger child died, too: Her mother accidentally smothered her in a desperate attempt to silence her cries.
An Israeli policeman also died in the attack. His family petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to block the prisoner swap, but the court rejected the petition. Smadar Haran and other family members have said they are devastated by the decision, though she recently said she understood it.
Israeli President Shimon Peres was expected to sign a document pardoning Kantar yesterday.
“It’s not a happy choice,” Peres said before the Cabinet vote.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not