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Abducted IAF navigator Ron Arad
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| By Israel Insider staff October 21, 2007 |
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The prime minister's coordinator for missing soldiers, Ofer Dekel, stressed that Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese terrorist being held in an Israeli prisoner after being convicted of murdering members of a family in Nahariya in cold blood, will not be exchanged a prisoner swap with Hezbollah.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah has long demanded Kuntar's release in exchange for information on Ron Arad, who was kidnapped in Lebanon in 1986. After Hezbollah last week gave Israel a letter written by Arad in 1988, which reportedly provided no insight into his case, the terrorist organization is demanding that Israel now hand over Kuntar, according to an article in Der Spiegel that will be published on Monday.
The letter proved "that Hezbollah has at least part of the puzzle," the terrorist organization said, despite Nasrallah's admission last week that Hezbollah did not no anything about Arad's whereabouts.
Dekel said that Kuntar "will not be part of any deal concerning the abducted soldiers," referring to the two reservists, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were abducted last year by Hezbollah, sparking the Second Lebanon War.
Israel's 2004 offer on Kuntar still stands, he said. "We will not release him without receiving information about the fate of Ron Arad," Dekel told the German magazine.
Last week Israel gave Hezbollah one mentally ill prisoner along with the remains of two other prisoners in exchange for the body of Gabriel Dawit, a civilian who washed up on Lebanese shores after drowning in the Mediterranean Sea last year. Dekel, however, stressed that "we are not close to a final deal" on securing the reservists' release.
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