In Focus

05 December 2008 04:38 BST

'Dead soldiers for terrorists'

Yesterday's highly-significant Israeli-Hizbullah prisoner exchange has prompted very different reactions either side of the border, writes Matthew Champion.

A national holiday was declared in Lebanon to mark the exchange that will see five Hizbullah prisoners and the bodies of 199 fighters returned by Israel.

But in the Jewish state the population is in mourning over the unequal terms of the deal, which is being viewed as a grim necessity.

In return for releasing five high profile prisoners – including notorious militant Samir Kuntar – Israel has received the bodies of two soldiers whose capture in 2006 sparked a month-long conflict with Hizbullah.

Until the moment two black coffins were unloaded at Rosh Hanikra on the Israeli-Lebanese border, the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev still had hope the men could be alive. Goldwasser, 31, and Regev, 27, were patrolling on the Israeli side of the border in early July 2006 when their jeeps were hit by Hizbullah missiles.

Several of their army colleagues died in the attack, which led to a massive Israeli retaliation that lasted 33 days, claiming the lives of 1,191 Lebanese civilians, 44 Israeli civilians, up to 600 Hizbullah fighters and 119 Israeli soldiers. Hizbullah never directly commented on the fate of Goldwasser and Regev in order to strengthen their bargaining power. But privately senior Israeli ministers were always of the mind the soldiers were dead, possibly since the attack upon their patrol itself.

The release of five prisoners including quadruple-murderer Kuntar is seen by some as too high a price to pay.

Kuntar, a member of the Palestine Liberation Front, launched an attack upon the Israeli town of Nahariya with other militants by boat in 1979.

The group shot and killed a policeman and then took an Israeli family hostage, with Kuntar shooting a man in front of his four-year-old daughter before beating the child to death with a rock and his rifle butt.

Kuntar was also convicted of the murder of the man's other daughter who died when she was accidentally smothered by her mother seeking shelter.

Among the bodies being returned to Hizbullah are the perpetrators of the Ma'alot massacre – in which 22 Israeli high school students were murdered – and the capture of an Israeli bus on a coastal road that led to the deaths of 35 civilians.

In response to criticism Hizbullah has received far more than it has given up, the Israel Defence Forces said it had a moral obligation to its soldiers and their families.

The father of one of the Israeli soldiers whose bodies were returned today, Shlomo Goldwasser, said he was shocked by the celebrations on the other side of the border.

"I cannot understand what the Lebanese are so glad about and happy about," he said.

"They sacrificed over 700 of their best warriors and all their economy, and what they get for what they did is a murderer, a bloody murderer of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl and her father - and for this they are making all this glory, for this they sacrificed so much. So I feel only pity for them."

The Israeli-Hizbullah war officially ended on August 14th 2006, but for the Goldwasser and Regev families the United Nations-brokered ceasefire brought little comfort.

It is now hoped the return of their sons will grant them the same closure the bereaved families on both sides of the border have been given.

The prisoner exchange follows the creation of a unity government in Lebanon last week. Despite the evident disparity of the exchange, there is real hope in the region it is a sign of an impending period of relative peace and stability.