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November 14, 2003/Cheshvan 19 5764, Vol. 56, No. 8
Sharon digs in on prisoner release
LESLIE SUSSER
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Israeli Cabinet ministers have seldom faced a more acute moral and political dilemma than the current prisoner-exchange deal with Hezbollah.
That proposal, which the 23-member Cabinet approved Nov. 9 by a one-vote margin, forced ministers to weigh the conflicting interests of several Israeli families, put a price on the life of a kidnapped Israeli citizen - and consider the long-term price that all Israelis may yet have to pay.
Now the government may have another decision to make: Hezbollah is demanding that those released include Samir Kuntar, the terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who murdered an Israeli family in a 1979 attack.
Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, claims Israel promised to release Kuntar and that without him the deal is off.
Israeli officials say they never promised to free Kuntar - and that Israel, too, has red lines that it won't cross.
"Regarding Kuntar, who killed an Israeli family, from our standpoint this is a principle: We have not freed Palestinians, or nationals of other countries, with blood on their hands," Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expended a tremendous amount of political capital for a deal that involved complex moral considerations and provides insight into the Israeli leader's core values.
Citing the principle that you don't leave dead or wounded soldiers in the field, some ministers backed the deal, which includes kid-napped Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three dead Israeli soldiers.
Others, making the same argument, opposed the deal because it doesn't include captured air force navigator Ron Arad, or even in-formation on Arad's fate.
Under the terms of the deal, Israel will release 400 Palestinians and 20 Lebanese prisoners and hand over the remains of dozens of Lebanese militiamen in return for Tannenbaum and the bodies of the three soldiers abducted by Hezbollah in October 2000.
Arad went missing in action when his plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. The deal calls on German mediators and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah to set up a joint committee to find out what happened to Arad after his Lebanese captors allegedly handed him over to Iran - but few in Israel expect Hezbollah to take that commitment seriously.
The Cabinet debate pitted two cardinal principles against each other: Part of the raison d'etre of a Jewish state is that it serve as a guardian of the Jewish people and, as such, does all it can to bring back captured Israelis alive. On the other hand, most Israelis strongly believe that they shouldn't give in to terrorists because it will only encourage more attacks.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.
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