01-29-2004, 09:50 PM
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Cheesesteak GURU! Wiz with
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Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Tullytown
Posts: 3,325
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Israeli Prisoner Swap
Israeli Forensic Team in Germany for Prisoner Swap
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...prisoners_dc_2
By Dan Williams
Quote:
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Israeli forensic experts and army rabbis flew to Germany on Wednesday to make final preparations, still shrouded in secrecy, for a prisoner exchange with Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah.
The swap on Thursday will mean the release of 436 Arab prisoners, most of them Palestinians, in return for a captured Israeli businessman and three Israeli soldiers presumed dead after they were abducted on a border patrol in 2000.
Only once the soldiers are identified at a German airport -- if necessary by DNA tests on their bodies -- will there be a go-ahead for the rest of a carefully choreographed exchange, mediated by Germany.
"This is the green light for the whole deal," said one Israeli military source.
Some 400 Palestinians, among more than 7,500 held by Israel, will be taken to the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites) while remaining Arab and Lebanese prisoners will be flown to Germany before going home. Among them is a German convert to Islam.
The handover will pave the way for negotiations over the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad, shot down over Lebanon in a 1986 bombing raid.
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Any thoughts on this? Wouldn't this be considered giving into terrorist demands?
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