The plot thickens
The second phase of the German-brokered prisoner deal between Israel and Hizbullah is far from straightforward, Christian Henderson reports
On 29 January, Israel released 435 Arab prisoners in return for the release of Israeli Colonel Elhanan Tannenbaum and the remains of three soldiers who were captured by Hizbullah in the Shebaa Farms in October 2001, as part of the first phase of a prisoner exchange. Whilst the deal was widely criticised in Israel, Hizbullah hailed the exchange as a great victory. It is widely seen as enhancing the party's reputation as the only political group in the region that can successfully confront Israel. Whether the proposed "second phase" will be as triumphant is open to question.
The second and more complex stage of the prisoner swap involves Hizbullah giving Israel information on missing Israeli airman Rod Arad in return for the release of Samir Qontar, who is believed to be the last Lebanese prisoner held in an Israeli prison, in addition to information on the fate of four Iranian diplomats who went missing in Lebanon in 1982. The diplomats went missing in northern Lebanon in an area controlled by the Lebanese Forces (LF) militia as they were travelling to Syria during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
The LF was at that time allied to Israel. Arad was shot down over Lebanon in 1986 and was held by Hizbullah official Mustafa Dirani, who was captured by Israeli commandos in 1994 and released in the recent exchange. According to Israel, Arad was eventually passed over to Iran. Both Hizbullah and Tehran deny any knowledge of his whereabouts.
Nizar Hamzi, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, said that if Arad is alive Hizbullah could demand that Israel release high-profile Palestinian prisoners. "We will have a breakthrough down the road where some information is going to be produced ... if Ron Arad is alive then definitely [the deal] might include significant prisoners like Marwan Barghouti and others," Hamzi said. Germany, whose officials helped broker the deal, has said it may also release three prisoners, two Lebanese and an Iranian, who are serving life sentences in Germany.
Earlier this month the Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi visited Lebanon and held talks with government officials in an effort to uncover information on the four diplomats. Kharrazi was quoted as saying "from our point of view [the diplomats] are alive and they are in Israel." Whilst relatives of the men believe they are still alive and being held in Israel, Al-Jazeera recently quoted an Israeli security source as saying the men were murdered by elements in the LF militia as a result of an internal dispute. The source denied that Israel had played any role in the disappearance of the men.
This version of events was similar to a recent report in the magazine of the outlawed LF that quoted a former head of LF intelligence as saying that the diplomats were executed two days after they were arrested at a checkpoint in the north. The former officer said they were killed on the orders of Elie Hobeika, at that time in the senior leadership of the LF and who was assassinated in early 2002, and that they were buried in east Beirut in an area where a factory now stands.
Due to the secrecy that has shrouded the whole deal since negotiations began around three years ago, it is difficult to assess where the second stage of the deal currently stands. The brother of Samir Qontar, Bassem, who has been campaigning on his behalf in Lebanon and Europe, told Al-Ahram Weekly he believed his brother would be released shortly. "The German negotiators said Lebanese citizens would be released 'without delay'. So we think that without delay means that the German negotiators and German government have a good chance of getting him released within a matter of months, otherwise they would lose their credibility," he said.
Qontar was a member of the militant Palestinian Liberation Front, and was captured in northern Israel on a 1979 raid that killed several Israelis.
If the second phase of the deal falls through there could be renewed clashes on the already tense Israel-Lebanon border. Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said, in a speech made at the ceremony held to welcome the released prisoners, that if Israel blocked the second phase then Hizbullah would kidnap more soldiers and that "next time I promise you we will capture them alive."
Nasrallah affirmed the party is still ready to use force to achieve its goals. "Peaceful negotiations are not an alternative to military resistance," he said.
Yet the near conclusion of the prisoner swap, one of Hizbullah's main promises after the Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in May 2001, raises questions over the party's future role. "I think prisoners are mostly exchanged after a conflict, " said Reinoud Leenders, an analyst from the International Crisis Group (a Brussels-based human rights research organisation), and author of a recent report on the conflict between Israel and Hizbullah. Leenders does not doubt that the second phase of the deal will be completed. When it is, he reasons, Hizbullah will have to rethink its role, and in particular its relationship with Syria, the powerbroker in Lebanon. "There is discomfort and unease about the role of Syria in Lebanon combined with an economic recession which is rightly or wrongly blamed on Syrian intervention," Leenders said.
"I think Hizbullah is basically operating in the south because it is allowed to do so by Syria, so there will be a moment where Hizbullah will be identified with that Syrian presence which is increasingly disliked in Lebanon ... I think Hizbullah should be thinking about this if it wants to remain a player in Lebanon in the longer term," Leenders added.
