Hezbollah makes 'good will' gesture swap with Israel
Israel and Hezbollah completed Monday a limited prisoners exchange. Israel had transferred two bodies of Islamic resistance martyrs who fell in the 2006 Israeli aggression against Lebanon and a detainee. In return Hezbollah handed the body of an Israeli settler who was swept to Lebanese shore after he had drowned in Haifa.
Officials from the U.N. and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) facilitated the exchange at the frontier Lebanese town of Naqoura.
Israel released detainee Hassan Naim Aqil and handed over the bodies of martyrs Ali Wizwaz and Mohammed Damashqiah. In addition to the civilian's body, Israel received "additional information about other cases" of missing Israelis, an Israeli official said without giving any further details.
Officials from the U.N. and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) facilitated the exchange at the frontier Lebanese town of Naqoura.
Israel released detainee Hassan Naim Aqil and handed over the bodies of martyrs Ali Wizwaz and Mohammed Damashqiah. In addition to the civilian's body, Israel received "additional information about other cases" of missing Israelis, an Israeli official said without giving any further details.



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Hezbollah still holds Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who it seized in July 2006. The U.N.-appointed mediator is working on a deal to get the soldiers exchanged for Lebanese and other detainees in Israeli jails.
On January 29, 2004, Israel freed nearly 450 detainees, most of them Palestinians and Arabs, in exchange for Israeli former intelligence officer Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three soldiers. The exchange was brokered by German intelligence chief Ernst Uhrlau.
"This is an ugly and cynical trade in the feelings and sensitivity of the Israeli society. Sometimes we have no choice but to pay heavy prices. I believe, however, that yesterday's move was carried out in a balanced manner and with a price the State of Israel can bear," Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said during a conference in the city of Ashdod. "Yesterday we went through a certain stage in the process. Unfortunately, however, the road leading to the return of Udi (Ehud Goldwasser) and Eldad (Regev) in the north and Gilad (Shalit) in the south is still long," he added.