✍The exchange deal

The release of the prisoners Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustafa Dirani in exchange for the bodies of the three soldiers and Elhanan Tannenbaum (the exchange took place in Cologne, Germany). At the reception ceremony Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah thanked the German mediator "for his integrity" and said the negotiations had not touched politics, and pledged to those still in captivity (Samir Kuntar, Yahya Skaf, Nassim Nisr): "We will not leave any of them and we will not forget any of them"; he promised to learn Ron Arad's fate and that the resistance "will bring the soldiers back alive next time". At the funeral of the returned martyrs on 31 January Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Israel had repeated what it said in the 1996 and 1998 exchanges, that "this is all the bodies it has", which was untrue, urging the families "do not despair", and anyone who knew the burial places of martyrs to pass on the information in confidence. The deal freed 435 Lebanese and Arab prisoners and returned the remains of sixty martyrs.