Nazir Majally, Asharq Al-Awsat

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 27 January 2004 — Israeli soldiers yesterday began exhuming bodies of Lebanese fighters buried in a small plot in northern Israel, a first step toward a prisoner exchange with the Hezbollah group later this week.

Soldiers removed numbered metal grave markers from each burial site before removing the bodies — 59 in all. The fenced-in plot overlooking the pastoral hills of the Galilee region has been used as a cemetery for Lebanese killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers. The swap is to take place Thursday. Israel will hand over the bodies and also release 436 prisoners — 400 Palestinians, 35 from Arab countries and a German convicted of spying for Hezbollah.

In exchange, Hezbollah will hand over an Israeli businessman and the bodies of three soldiers captured by the group in 2000. Part of the swap is to take place in Germany.

The complete list of prisoners to be released by Israel is to be published this morning to allow for last-minute appeals to the high court ahead of the exchange.

The deal has divided opinion amid continuing uncertainty over the fate of missing navigator Ron Arad, shot down over Lebanon in 1986.

In a secondary deal, Israel has agreed to turn over Samir Kantar, a Lebanese prisoner jailed for life over the murder of an Israeli father and daughter in 1979, in return for “concrete proof” about the fate of Arad.

Some 44 percent of those questioned in a survey for the Maariv daily said they were in favor of the exchange while exactly the same percentage were opposed to it.