Missing Israeli Soldiers: Dead or Alive?
Most Israelis believe government not doing enough to bring them home.
JERUSALEM, June 24, 2008 — -- After a two-year wait, Israel may declare two soldiers thought to be held hostage by Hezbollah as dead, despite a week of seemingly hopeful negotiations for their return.
Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, Israeli soldiers abducted by Lebanese militia in 2006, may be declared "killed in action with burial site unknown" by Israel's Chief Military Rabbi, who has been provided with forensic and intelligence information about them. The rabbi is expected to deliberate the matter soon.
This declaration appears arbitrary to many, including the families of the kidnapped soldiers.
Just last Friday, Eldad's father Zvi Regev said the deal for his son's return was close. "We are on the threshold of a deal with Hezbollah and everything depends on the government," he told Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz after a meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Now, the families are not quite sure what to think of the introduction of the military rabbi into the situation.
"It surprised us," Shlomo Goldwasser, Ehud's father, told ABC News. "I hope that it will not get in the way of the deal."
"We still have hope that our son will be back," he said. "More than this, I cannot tell you — because I don't know."
The decision was also a baffling move to Alon Ben-David, a Middle East correspondent for Israeli news station Channel 10, who has been covering the hostages' situation.
"There has been no new information received, as far as I know," Ben-David told ABC News.
"The government has had information about their condition, even though it has always been inconclusive, for a long time. We could have begun this process of assessing them as casualties a year ago."
The discussed deal with Hezbollah centered on the exchange of the two Israeli soldiers, for the release of Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, four other live operatives and the remains of eight dead prisoners captured in 2006.
Kuntar was jailed 29 years ago for the murder of an Israeli and his 4-year-old daughter in an attack in the north of Israel.
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