A Lebanese man held prisoner in Israel is released and handed over to Lebanon

BEIRUT (AP) — A Lebanese man who had been held prisoner in Israel was released Thursday, the first such handover since the outbreak of the latest Israel-Hezbollah war six months ago, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Lebanese officials said.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that Israel had agreed to release five Lebanese civilians detained by Israeli forces in southern Lebanon after Lebanon provided assistance in searching for the bodies of Lebanese Jewish leaders who were “abducted and murdered by terrorist organizations” in the 1980s, during Lebanon’s civil war.

The first released prisoner, identified as Malek Ghazi, was handed over to the Lebanese army via the Red Cross, a Lebanese security official said. A second official said they were anticipating the release of another prisoner. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Ghazi was handed over to the ICRC at the border crossing in the coastal town of Naqoura on Lebanon’s southern frontier and was then transferred to a Lebanese army intelligence office in the city of Tyre, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported.

Netanyahu’s statement said the five Lebanese captives after interrogation were found not to be “members of a terrorist organization” or “involved in terrorism.”

Prisoner release after US mediation

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam thanked the U.S. and its ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, for assisting in the release.

“We will continue working until all our prisoners are released, the fate of the missing is revealed, and a complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory is achieved,” he said in a statement.

Dozens of Lebanese prisoners are believed to be held in Israeli detention centers, including civilians as well as Hezbollah militants captured during fighting in southern Lebanon.

The circumstances of Ghazi’s capture were not immediately clear, but one of the Lebanese officials said he was a civilian.

A step forward for Lebanon-Israel negotiations

The prisoner release came as talks between Lebanese and Israeli officials had appeared to reach an impasse. Lebanon and Israel in June signed a U.S.-mediated framework deal under which Israeli forces were to withdraw from areas they are occupying in southern Lebanon in exchange for disarmament of the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, but little progress has been made in implementation on the ground.

Another round of talks is expected to take place in Rome later this month.

“However difficult the negotiation process may seem, we will continue to mobilize all necessary efforts to safeguard Lebanon’s rights and the interests of the Lebanese people,” Salam’s statement said.

An official involved in the negotiations said Lebanon had not made its participation in the next round of talks conditional on the prisoner release, but that the release of captives was an “integral part of the implementation” of the Lebanon-Israel agreement.

The Lebanese “are actively searching for the bodies of the Lebanese Jewish leaders,” including in Jewish cemeteries, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Lebanon once had a thriving Jewish community. As many as 15,000 to 22,000 Jews lived in Lebanon in the mid-1960s, but the various Arab-Israeli wars and Lebanon’s own 1975-90 civil war caused waves of emigration and today, almost none are left in the country.

Hezbollah weapons, Israeli withdrawal, remain issues

While the release of the prisoners marks a step forward in the negotiations, other issues remain difficult to resolve.

Hezbollah is not a party to the Lebanon-Israel talks and has said it will not give up its weapons in any area north of southern Lebanon’s Litani river. Israeli officials, meanwhile, have said they will not withdraw unless Hezbollah is disarmed throughout the country.

The Lebanese state has been reluctant to attempt to forcibly disarm the militant group, which is also a political party and social services provider with a large popular base in the country’s Shiite Muslim community.

Lebanon fought a brutal civil war from 1975 to 1990, and many fear that any clash between the Lebanese army and Hezbollah could spiral into another devastating civil conflict.

Hezbollah and Israel have fought a series of wars since the militant group was founded with Iranian support in the 1980s to combat Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon at the time. Their latest war began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired missiles over the border, two days after the U.S. and Iran attacked Iran.

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Saeed reported from Herzliya, Israel.