JERUSALEM — Lebanon’s Hezbollah has told Israel it does not know what happened to an airman missing for more than two decades but it thinks he is dead, Israeli officials said Saturday. The report could clear the way for a prisoner swap between the two foes.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received the Hezbollah report Saturday on the fate of Ron Arad, an airman missing since he was captured alive after his fighter jet went down over Lebanon in 1986.
The report was part of an Israel-Hezbollah deal in which Israel would hand over Samir Kantar, a Lebanese man serving multiple life terms for a 1979 attack in Israel’s north; four Hezbollah prisoners; and dozens of fighters’ bodies.
In return, Israel was to get two soldiers captured by Hezbollah in a 2006 raid that set off a fierce 34-day war. Olmert has said that he thinks the soldiers are dead.
