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Nasrallah
proposed the swap in a statement read on his group's Al-Manar
television channel
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BEIRUT,
April 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The chief of Lebanese
Resistance Group, Hezbollah, offered late Wednesday, April 10, to free
a captured Israeli soldier in exchange for the lives of Palestinians
abducted in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Hezbollah's
leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah proposed the swap in a statement read
on his group's Al-Manar television channel.
Hezbollah
"proposes to free (Israeli) Colonel El-Khanan Tennenbaum whom
Hezbollah has detained in exchange for an end to the attack on Jenin's
refugee camp and an agreement... to guarantee the safety of the lives
of those (Palestinian) combatants," the statement read.
Tennenbaum,
a reservist colonel, was kidnapped under mysterious circumstances by
Hezbollah in October 2000, shortly after the start of the ongoing
Palestinian intifada.
Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah, in a statement issued by his office, offered that
any mediator could come forward to work out the details of the deal,
reported Israeli daily newspaper, Ha’aretz.
About
a week before his capture, Hezbollah seized three Israeli soldiers in
a raid on the northern border.
Nasrallah
has repeatedly said negotiations were underway for the trade of the
four Israelis for Arab prisoners. But he has refused to give any
information about the Israelis or say whether they were alive or dead,
the paper said. Israel believes those three soldiers have since been
killed.
Meanwhile,
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has spoken Wednesday, April 10, of
his fear of a "second front" in the Middle East, as further
violence flared between Israeli occupation forces and Lebanese
Hezbollah resistance fighters, BBC’s online news service reported.
Hezbollah
has been launching almost daily attacks on the Shebaa region since
Israeli forces began their offensive in the West Bank 12 days ago.
The
latest clashes erupted after fighters fired on three Israeli army
positions in the occupied Shebaa area - near the border between
Israel, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights captured from
Syria in 1967.
The
took over an Israeli outpost on Rweisat Al-Alam hill. They claim to
have destroyed Israeli tanks and equipment as well as causing
casualties.
Several
rockets fired by Hezbollah directly hit an Israeli radar post on Mount
Hermon, in the foothills of the Golan Heights, witnesses and security
sources said, and smoke was seen rising over the Israeli positions.
Earlier,
military sources in northern Israel said rockets and mortars fired
from the Lebanese side of the border fell near the town of Kiryat
Shmona, but no casualties were reported.
On
Monday, the Israeli army called up fresh reservists for possible
deployment on the northern border, the BBC reported.
