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Hezbollah Tells Israel To Deal Or Face More Captures
CAIRO, Jan 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Lebanese Islamic Resistance Movement, Hezbollah, threatened it would capture more Israeli soldiers if the Jewish state did not release members of the group and other Arab prisoners held in Israeli jails, news agencies reported Monday.
The Shi'ite Muslim organization, active in South Lebanon, aims to pressure Israel to exchange four Israeli soldiers seized last year for some 15,000 Arab prisoners.
Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the group's leader, reiterated Sunday his group's commitment to help the families of Arab and Iranian Muslim prisoners and promised to get them back to their homeland. He said he is ready to bargain with Israel and said the issue has kept him "occupied".
"If you are rejecting our righteous and just demands, and you want to convince us that your soldiers who are in our hands are not enough to achieve our demands ...and that we have to work anew to capture more of your soldiers and officers... We are ready for that and we will," said Nasrallah, in comments directed towards Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
In October, Hezbollah seized three Israeli soldiers in clashes near the Lebanese-Israeli border. In the same month, they ensnared an Israeli intelligence agent in Lebanon attempting to infiltrate the group.
Nasrallah made the announcement after the arrival in Lebanon of a Hezbollah activist released Sunday after having served a 10-year jail sentence in Israel. The activist was captured during skirmishes with the Israeli occupation army near Nakoura in the western sector of south Lebanon.
The online edition of the Israeli daily, The Jerusalem Post, said Israeli security sources maintain there is no connection between his release and return to Lebanon via the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and ongoing efforts to secure the release of the four Israelis held by the Hezbollah.
The newspaper also said Lebanese sources reported that they expected the man would relay some messages to Hezbollah from the Israeli government, and that his release could be seen as "a confidence-building measure toward the possibility of an exchange."
Israel also returned to Syria a Syrian national arrested by Israeli soldiers a few weeks ago. The man said he lost his way to Syria as he tried to leave Lebanon, where he worked.
Barak' s cabinet recently asserted that negotiations would take place soon to deliver the four Israeli detainees whose locations and circumstances remain mysterious since their capture.
Nasrallah urged Barak to release Palestinian, Lebanese and Iranian prisoners in his final days in office before Israeli elections take place on February 6th.
In 1982, a Lebanese collaborator with Israel kidnapped three Iranian diplomats and an Iranian driver during the invasion of South Lebanon.
Addressing the plight of all Israeli prisoners desired released by the Hezbollah, Nasrallah said at a conference on Jerusalem, which started Sunday in Beirut, "I believe the matter is going to receive special attention during the remaining days. There is an attempt to achieve something."
Israel has captured 13 Lebanese, among them two Islamic activists, besides a large number of Arabs that Israel killed, and whose bodies Hezbollah claims.
Palestinian and Arab relatives, and friends of Arab prisoners, handed Hezbollah lists of more than 1,500 prisoners in Israel and demanded their inclusion in any swap deals with the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, clashes erupted in South Lebanon near the Lebanon-Israeli border after Israeli tank fire killed two Muslim activists Friday.
The Lebanese government has refused to send its troops near the Israeli border since Hezbollah expelled Israeli troops from South Lebanon in May, saying that it would let its troops to serve as border guards for the Palestinian state.
Lebanon's Prime Minister, Rafik El Hariri, however, stressed that his government would not let Palestinian activists use South Lebanon as a base for launching attacks on Israel in order to prevent any incitement for retaliation.
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