The documents that Hezbollah gave Israel as part of Monday's "mini-swap" do not solve the riddle of missing navigator Ron Arad's fate; they merely seek to absolve Hezbollah of responsibility. The Islamic organization's message is: We have done all we can. We searched for Arad all over Lebanon. We found nothing.
Hezbollah claims that it has thereby fulfilled its side of "phase two" of a 2004 prisoner exchange, in which it promised to supply reliable information about Arad's fate in exchange for Israel's release of Samir Kuntar, who murdered the Haran family in Nahariya in 1979. TO back this claim, it supplied details of everything it has done since 2004 to try to find Arad.
What does Hezbollah hope to gain by this? First, Israeli confirmation that the Arad case is closed. Then, it will request that both sides proceed to the next stage. The question is what exactly "the next stage" means. Is Hezbollah demanding Kuntar's return as a reward for its efforts over Arad? Or is it merely seeking to ensure Kuntar's inclusion in a deal for the return of kidnapped soldiers Eldad Regev and Udi Goldwasser?
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Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, who boasts of his knowledge of Israeli society, surely understands that Ehud Olmert's government has limited room to maneuver on this issue. Israel will have trouble absolving Hezbollah of all responsibility for Arad, even if the major players in the case are Iran and the Amal organization, which held Arad initially. It is also hard to imagine Israel releasing Kuntar, one of its strongest bargaining chips, without getting Regev and Goldwasser in exchange.
But even including Kuntar in a swap for Regev and Goldwasser will first require the government to overcome several obstacles: the opposition of the Arad family, which knows that Kuntar's release would end any remaining chances of obtaining information about the navigator; getting Nasrallah - who is currently demanding a massive prisoner release just for information about the two kidnapped soldiers - to settle for a minimal price; and finally, the fact that releasing many Palestinian prisoners as part of this deal would be pure profit for Hezbollah and its ally, Hamas.
What does Israel know about Arad's fate? The intelligence agencies are not in full agreement, but as more and more time has passed with no sign of life - the last credible information about Arad was received 18 years ago - the theory that he died in captivity has gained currency. Tehran has consistently denied holding Arad, but Israel has solid information that his Lebanese captors transferred him to Iran in the late 1980s.
In 2002, the army appointed a committee headed by a retired judge to study the issue. This panel concluded that lack of solid information to the contrary, Arad should be considered alive. The Mossad agreed. However, Military Intelligence believes that Arad was returned to Lebanon 10 to 12 years ago, and died in captivity shortly thereafter.
Following the 2004 prisoner swap, Hezbollah searched the area where Arad was thought to have been buried and gave Israel some bones for analysis, but they proved not to belong to the missing airman.
Hezbollah's efforts to locate Arad apparently failed for two reasons. First, massive construction work at the suspected burial site made it hard to located the secret grave; and second, Iran was not interested in helping solve the riddle.
Following Monday's swap, sources close to Olmert were quoted as saying that the deal proved that talks progressed better when neither the media nor the Regev and Goldwasser families interfered. One can certainly wonder whether the families' public demands that the government do more will not raise the price of any future deal, yet one can hardly blame them for exerting such pressure. They are haunted by the example of Arad's family: model citizens who kept quiet and let the government work in peace, and 21 years later, are still in the dark about their loved one's fate.
It is no secret that soon after he was captured, Israel missed opportunities to trade for Arad's release, at a price that seems reasonable by today's standards. But the government hesitated, and then lost track of him, leaving an open wound - a riddle that millions of shekels and thousands of man-hours have been unable to solve.
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