The families of the two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah last summer are to return from Brussels Thursday, after meeting European Union parliament members and taking part in a mass rally to release the abducted soldiers.

"We still don't know if they're alive," said Shlomo Goldwasser, father of the soldier Udi Goldwasser, at a news conference.

Representatives of European Jewish organizations, who organized the rally, said that thousands of Jews from all over Europe had come to Brussels to participate in it.

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The families asked the EU parliamentarians to help them obtain a sign of life from the soldiers. Udi Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were captured by Hezbollah and Noam Shalit was captured near the Gazan border.

The families, who arrived in Brussels on Tuesday, also met with the speaker of the Belgian parliament, who promised to try and obtain information about the soldiers from his Lebanese counterpart, Nabih Berri.

European Friends of Israel (EFI), a European pro-Israeli lobby, joined the families in calling on European institutions to use their influence in the Middle East and demand a sign of life from the captured soldiers, in exchange for aid to the Palestinian Authority and Lebanon.