TEL AVIV, Israel, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- A somber mood gripped Israel Thursday as an air force Being 707 landed with the remains of three soldiers Hezbollah had kidnapped and a live businessman who now expects a tough time explaining how he got to Beirut three years and three months ago.
The mood seemed in stark contrast to the warm reception in Beirut to the Lebanese men Israel had released under the agreed swap with Hezbollah. Firecrackers burst in the air, a military honor guard was on hand, and heads of state hugged and kissed the arrivals.
Under the deal negotiated through Germany, Israel paid a heavy price for its men. It released 429 Palestinian prisoners to their homes in the West Bank and Gaza and flew to Germany dozens of Lebanese, Syrian, Sudanese, Libyan and German citizens. Two Moroccans asked to stay in Israel. One of them is serving time for beating his local wife. The Sudanese received political asylum in Sweden, a reliable source told United Press International on condition he not be identified. Israel returned also the bodies of 60 Lebanese.
The deal with Hezbollah aroused uneasiness partly because it boosted the stature of that organization's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. The deal indicated Israel was willing to "pay" for kidnapped people
, and that force does make Israel yield.
"This encourages extortion
," said Uzi Dayan who headed Israel's National Security Council and was Deputy Chief of General Staff. Dayan spoke on Israeli TV.
The feeling was that such a deal would prompt more attacks on Israel. The prognosis was brought home shortly before 9 a.m. when a suicide bomber, reportedly a former Palestinian policemen associated with the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, blew himself up in a Jerusalem bus killing 10 people and wounding 50 others, 13 of whom were reported in serious condition.
The army did not allow reporters near the plane that landed after sunset. Only an army spokesman photographer was on hand and the pictures the military released afterwards showed soldiers carrying the coffins and military Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon and other generals saluting them.
The coffins were later brought to areas where the bereaved families could spend time in private before the official state ceremony.
The three dead soldiers had been on patrol along the U.N. marked boundary line between the Golan and Lebanon on October 2000
, when Hezbollah gunmen attacked them. The attackers crossed the fence and kidnapped the soldiers. To cover its action
, Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions along a 40-kilometer front so more than half an hour passed before the army realized its soldiers were kidnapped, the head of the army's Manpower Directorate, Maj. Gen. Gil Regev said.
For more than three years Hezbollah refused to give inkling on the soldiers' fate.
Thursday morning Israeli doctors checked the bodies in Cologne, Germany, where the swap was held. Regev said later it seemed the three died during the attack or shortly after it.
Israel's President Moshe Katsav, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, cabinet ministers and the army's general command attended a ceremony for the three soldiers, Staff Sgts. Benny Avraham, who commanded the patrol, Omar Saoud the jeep's driver, and Adi Avitan, the machine gunner.
Katsav supported the government's decision to go for the swap even though Israel still had not received any information about its missing Phantom jet navigator Ron Arad who has been missing for 17 years. Arad was captured alive but then disappeared.
Alluding to the bodies and the businessman who were returned, Katsav said, "The government acted out of ...human sensitivity, in accordance with consciousness and morality."
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the deciding factor in favor of the swap was "a Jewish feeling," the requirement to save anyone who can be saved.
Nasrallah indicated Sunday, and again at a ceremony in Beirut's southern suburbs, that Hezbollah may resume kidnappings to get other Lebanese Israel is still holding. Sharon warned Hezbollah not to do so.
"The State of Israel will not let any enemy
, no terror organization, turn kidnapping and ransom into a method. There are means we have not taken. If
, God forbid, circumstances change we shall not hesitate to use them," Sharon said at the ceremony.
The soldiers' families seemed devastated. Up to the last minute they were hoping their loved ones would return alive.
"I've got this tiny glimmer of hope that maybe there will be a miracle," Benny Avraham's mother, Edna, said. Later chief Israeli negotiator
, Ilan Biran phoned to relay the bad news.
Benny's grandmother was sobbing and his father, Haim
, tried to comfort her. "You still have grandchildren, children," he said.
"He was my loved one," the grandmother said wiping her tears.
At the airport ceremony Benny Avraham and Adi Avitan's fathers said the traditional Jewish mourning prayer, the Kadish. A relative of the Bedouin soldier Omar Souad recited the Islamic Fatiha.
In another room in the airbase
, away from the press, freed businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum, held an emotional reunion with his family.
Tannenbaum, who was also kidnapped in 2000, told Hezbollah's al-Manar TV he had gone to Lebanon to make money and because he was promised information about Arad.
Tannenbaum's report surprised Israelis who believe he was lured to Abu Dhabi and kidnapped there.
Israeli commentators noted Tannenbaum he spoke to al-Manar while still in Hezbollah captivity. Thursday, with German pilots beside him at Beirut airport, he would not repeat the claim he reached Beirut on his own free will.
Tannenbaum's son, Ori, said after the family reunion that his father's face was puffed up, his hair became gray, and he seemed to have aged.
However Ori Tannenbaum would not discuss his father's stay in Lebanon maintaining the authorities asked them not to talk about it. A gag order barred the media from reporting details of the Israeli investigation. Tannenbaum is to be questioned in a police facility north of Netanya.
