Okay, I am far from calling this a certainty - Haaretz, here has the story and they are usually fairly reliable but I'm not seeing it at Breitbart or Reuters. Anyway, the story has it that Hezbollah and Israel have come to terms to swap prisoners, the Israelis getting back their two IDF soldiers, Goldwasser and Regev and Hezbollah getting back a couple of their piles of shit along with some Hezbollah corpses. Here's from the article:
As for how certain this all is, there is this also in the same article so we outta take this all with a grain of salt:
Let's hope this story does come true and these two valiant soldiers are returned to their people. Finally.
Israeli sources said Monday that Israel and Hezbollah had struck a deal securing the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by the Lebanon-based militant group in a July 2006 cross border raid that sparked the Second Lebanon War. The sources explained that in exchange for the captives, Israel would release Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese militant currently imprisoned in Israel for the 1979 murder of a Nahariyah family, an Israeli citizen jailed for espionage on Hezbollah's behalf and four other Hezbollah men captured by Israel during the 2006 war. The deal reportedly will also include the return of the remains of ten Lebanese, currently held by Israel, to Hezbollah.
As for how certain this all is, there is this also in the same article so we outta take this all with a grain of salt:
Meanwhile Monday, another source involved in the negotiations over the release of the two captive soldiers said "a prisoner exchange deal with Hezbollah is yet far off."One thing I'm concerned about is the numbers here - Hezbollah and/or Hamas usually ask for hundreds of released prisoners in these exchanges and also, there is the thought that at least one of the Israeli soldiers was originally reported as severely wounded in the abduction by Hezbollah and many had speculated that he could not have survived those wounds.
Let's hope this story does come true and these two valiant soldiers are returned to their people. Finally.
J'lem sources say Israel and Hezbollah strike prisoner swap deal
Earlier Monday, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah hinted that a prisoner swap would soon be completed, telling supporters in Beirut that Kuntar would soon be freed.
The sources refrained from commenting on whether the Israeli captives, Ehud Golwasser and Eldad Regev, were alive. However, a medical report encompassing evidence from the site of the kidnapping near Israel's northern border maintained that at both Israel Defense Forces soldiers were seriously hurt at the scene.
The sources added that the fact that the deal did not include any Palestinian prisoners held in Israel may be indicative of the Israeli captives' condition. The timetable for the exchange of prisoners is not yet clear. Meanwhile Monday, another source involved in the negotiations over the release of the two captive soldiers said "a prisoner exchange deal with Hezbollah is yet far off." According to the source, Israel has not received any information in recent days to indicate that a deal is in fact within reach. The source added that the German mediator who has been working on the deal was not in Beirut last week, in contrast with media reports to the contrary. "Nasrallah doesn't coordinate his speeches with Israel," the source stressed, saying that the fact that Nasrallah hinted in his speech Monday that Samir Kuntar would soon be released from the Israeli prison in which he has been held since 1979, was not a new revelation.
As long as four years ago, Nasrallah proclaimed that Samir Kuntar would be released in the second part of the exchange deal that saw another Israeli Hezbollah captive, Elhanan Tenenbaum, returned to Israel. However, after Nasrallah failed to fulfill his part of the deal - to provide Israel with information regarding the missing navigator Ron Arad - Israel responded in kind and refused to release Kuntar. The source stressed that one may take solace in the fact that Nasrallah, in the sole sentence in which he referred to any prisoner exchange, did not mention the release of Palestinian prisoners, as he has consistently done in the past. Nasrallah's demand for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel has, in the past, been the main obstacle standing in the way of an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.
As was reported in Haaretz last week, Israel has made it clear, via the German mediator, that it would not release Palestinian prisoners in an exchange with a Lebanese organization. Israel explained that the negotiations surrounding the prisoner exchange was underway within the framework of United Nations Security Council resolution 1701, the resolution that ended the 2006 conflict between Israel and the Hezbollah, which applies only to Lebanon, and not to the Palestinian Authority.
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