An Israeli team is due to arrive in Geneva on Tuesday to inspect videotape footage related to the October capture of three Israeli soldiers by Lebanon’s Hizbollah resistance movement in the occupied Shabaa Farms.
Israel hopes to find in the tape, shot by UNIFIL soldiers in south Lebanon, clues about the operation that might shed light on the fate of the soldiers.
According to Haaretz, if the team is able to uncover new details they will be publicized after the families have been updated.
The three soldiers - Adi Avitan, Omar Sued and Beni Avraham - were taken prisoner by the group, which spearheaded resistance against the 22-year Israeli occupation of a zone in south Lebanon.
They hope to use the prisoners as bargaining chips to secure the release of hundreds of Lebanese, Palestinian and other Arab prisoners in the Jewish state.
According to Israel, the UN first denied the existence of the tape, then revealed it, and finally offered to hand over an edited version in which the faces of Hizbollah fighters are blurred.
Embarrassed UN leaders, including Secretary General Kofi Annan, apologized to Israel after it emerged two months ago that UNIFIL soldiers had filmed events the day after the capture, including the vehicles used by Hizbollah.
An internal UN investigation found that UN officials had been guilty of a "lapse of judgment," but that there had been no intentional effort to conceal the footage.
Early in August, an Israeli delegation arrived in New York to view the videotape.
But the team did not carry out its mission, reportedly because the UN insisted that only the edited copy be viewed – Albawaba.com
