Missing Israeli Soldiers: Dead or Alive?

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.

Ben-David said the issue is being brought up now because the prime minister is trying to withdraw from the deal.

"If a deal for their return is all in order, if it has been presented to the family, and now he [Prime Minister Ehud Olmert] is backing off, there's something missing," he said.

Throughout all the negotiations, Ben-David said that it has been clear to many that Israel is not paying for live captives.

Despite this, he said that "no one in the Cabinet would have voted against the deal." But, he added, an official declaration of death would change matters. "Now, it's hard to say how they will vote."

For the families, this is difficult news to handle.

"No one prepared us [for the possibility] that Ehud may not be alive," Miki Goldwasser, Ehud's mother, told Voice of Israel government radio.

According to a poll conducted by the Rafi Smith Consulting Institute, Israeli citizens are not happy with the way the government is handling the situation of the captured soldiers.

Israel is a country with compulsory military service, yet, according to the poll, two-thirds of the public believes that Israel "is not maintaining its commitments to IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers who are sent to fight its war."

Director of the research, Rafi Smith, said that this is an especially troubling finding.

"In Israel, you are born with the sense that if you are sent to the field, the country will do whatever it can do to bring you back," he said. "Dead or alive, they have to bring you back. It's very disturbing to find most thought that the government was not doing that."

Wednesday, June 25, marks two years to the day since Gilad Shalit, another Israeli soldier, was captured in a border crossing raid from Gaza. The cease-fire that began last Thursday in Gaza will include the opening of Gaza border crossings.

But the Shalit family sees the withholding of the opening of these crossings as their primary bartering chip during negotiations with Hamas. The family sent a petition to Israel's High Court, demanding that the court stop the opening of the crossings until their son is returned.

Eighty percent of the Israeli public agrees with them, saying that any agreement with Hamas must include a solution with Shalit, according to the Rafi Smith Institute poll. Additionally, 55 percent said they supported releasing Palestinians "with blood on their hands" in exchange for Shalit's return.

"The Israeli public is ready to pay what's considered to be a heavy price so that the Israeli soldiers will be released," Smith said, noting that 70 percent of Israelis thought that the government is not doing enough to release Shalit.

In contrast to popular sentiment on the issue, the Israeli government rejected the Shalit petition.

The government insisted that they needed to make policy decisions for the sake of the country, noting that ultimately those efforts should lead to Shalit's release.

These policy decisions are complicated, because Hamas has just increased its demands, asking for 1,000 prisoners in exchange for Shalit, many of them "the worst possible terrorists," according to Israeli government officials quoted in Ynetnews.com, an Israeli news source.

David Stavitsky, 23, was a medic at the scene when Shalit was captured. For him, it's important to distinguish between the situations of the three captured soldiers.

"If Regev and Goldwasser are killed, it's not good to give Kuntar for them in exchange for bodies," Stavitsky told ABC News. "You need to give bodies for bodies, not for living terrorists."

"But for Shalit, who we know is alive," he said, "we should give everything."

Correspondent Ben-David said that he heard the bill for the prisoner swap may be presented before the government this coming Sunday.

"If this is true, maybe the deal will go on," he said, "because I feel that the IDF understands the consequences of declaring them dead and will take their time to make a decision."

"It's a race now," Ben-David said. "There are two clocks ticking. One is the clock of the government, when they will endorse the deal of the prisoner exchange. The other is the clock of the declaration [of the kidnapped soldiers as dead]."

"Whichever comes first will determine the fate of the deal."