Israel’s Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer has caused alarm among security personnel by disclosing information on how the army is positive that three of its soldiers captured by Hizbollah in October last year are dead, according to Haaretz newspaper.
Speaking in an interview with Army Radio Wednesday, he said that the information the army received regarding the deaths of the three soldiers "left no doubt."
When asked what the information was, Ben Eliezer replied "Someone saw it."
Ben Eliezer added that during "the whole year, we have not concealed any information from the families. When this information arrived, that left no doubt that our three boys were killed, we brought them the information and I think that it is our obligation to bring the information....When the prime minister and the defense minister take a decision, they do not do so when it concerns such harsh information unless it is firmly based."
The minister said that negotiations to bring back the soldiers were continuing.
The paper said that Ben Eliezer's statements caused alarm in the security establishment. Security sources said that they feared that his comments would harm the safety of their sources that supplied the information on the fate of the three soldiers. The security establishment has made great efforts to prevent the publication of details regarding the source and nature of the information.
The chief rabbi of the Israel army, Brigadier General Yisrael Weiss, earlier declared that Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad were no longer alive.
The commander of the Israeli army's manpower division, Major General Gil Regev, had announced at a press conference that the army's new assessment was that the three soldiers had probably been killed while being captured.
The reversal in the army’s position regarding the condition of the three was the result of new information reaching military intelligence, he said.
Israel seized the mountainous Shabaa Farms region from Syria during the 1967 Israeli-Arab war. It is now claimed by Beirut, which says the farms were “given’ to Lebanon by Syria.
When the news was released earlier that the army was approaching the rabbis for their decision, the Lebanese resistance movement dismissed the announcement as a "failed Israeli attempt to obtain information.”
"The Zionists are wasting time so as to avoid paying the price," said a Hizbollah statement read on Al Manar television in Lebanon.
For his part, Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said, "The announcement that the Israeli army has definite information about the fate of the soldiers detained by Hizbollah is a failed campaign to obtain information about these prisoners by provoking a Hizbollah reaction."
Even families of the soldiers had said that they were caught in psychological warfare between Israel and the movement, which spearheaded the Israeli army's expulsion from the occupied zone in south Lebanon in May 2000.
Eyal Avitan, the brother of one of the POWs, Adi Avitan, told Army Radio that his family was relating to the army announcement as part of the ongoing psychological war between Israel and Hizbollah.
"I see this thing as an attempt, perhaps, as Nasrallah has said, to try and get more information out of him. We are in the middle, and we are being hurt both by Hizbollah and by our own country." – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
