Two Israeli soldiers whose capture in July by guerrillas from the Lebanese movement Hezbollah sparked a 34-day war, are still alive, a former Lebanese president was quoted on Friday as saying.
Amin Gemayel was approached by a reporter from the Israeli daily Maariv on the sidelines of a conference in Madrid on the Middle East peace process and asked to make a statement on the fate of the two men.
Maariv said that Roger Eddeh, a Lebanese delegation member, replied: ”They are alive,” and that Gemayel confirmed the statement.
Asked if there was a reasonable chance the two soldiers would return home alive and unharmed, Gemayel said: ”We all hope that this will indeed happen.”
It was not clear how Gemayel, who belongs to a political faction at odds with Hezbollah, would be privy to information about the fate of the soldiers.
Gemayel was president of Lebanon from 1982 to 1988.
The fate of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were captured in a cross-border raid on July 12, has been the subject of much speculation.
Last month, Israeli military officials said the two had been seriously wounded in the attack, in which three soldiers were killed, and that one of them was in critical condition.
A few days earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had told Parliament he did ”not know if the soldiers were alive”.
Meanwhile, army comrades of the two soldiers, as well as relatives and friends, left Jerusalem on Friday in a convoy headed to a town on the border with Lebanon in a show of support for the captives.
”We know that this is on the top of the public’s agenda, but we want to get it through to the heads of the public’s representatives,” Ofer Regev, Eldad’s brother, told the YNet News. — AFP
