Abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit is "alive and well," senior Fatah official Kadoura Fares said Wednesday.

Speaking to participants at a lecture on the Saudi peace initiative, the former Fatah legislator did not elaborate on Shalit's conditions or whereabouts, but said, "I understand what Gilad Shalit's parents are going through." Fares was responding to a question raised by a participant regarding the captured soldier.

Fares also said that Shalit's capture could not be viewed as a hostage situation because he was on duty at the time, "not on the beach." As such, Fares said, Shalit should be returned to Israel through a prisoner swap agreement with the Palestinians. "He should be given back just as thousands of Palestinian prisoners should be freed," said Fares.

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Meanwhile, relatives of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers captured by Hezbollah militants last July took their appeal for the men's freedom to Pope Benedict on Wednesday.

Five members of the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev spoke briefly to the Pope on the sidelines of a weekly general audience.

"It was a very honorable meeting, with a lot of attention from the Pope," Shlomo Goldwasser, Ehud's father, told Israel Radio.

The group, including Regev's brother and Goldwassers' parents and wife, gave the Pope a booklet with paintings from the Bible and photos of the captive soldiers, said Oded Ben-Hur, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See.

"You could see he was very touched," Ben-Hur said.

The Vatican did not comment on the meeting.

The relatives were also scheduled to meet with top Italian officials later Wednesday, including Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema.

Reservist soldiers Regev and Goldwasser were captured in a cross-border Hezbollah raid in which six other soldiers were killed and which triggered the 34-day war last summer.

Goldwasser said the Pope had already sent a letter to Lebanon asking the captors to release the two men or give some indication of their condition.

"We asked him not to stop the pressure he has begun to put on the humanitarian front, the demand for a sign of life, for proper treatment of the boys," Goldwasser said.

"Of course he [the Pope] cannot be involved in the process of winning their release, but we asked that he not stop being involved in the humanitarian aspect."

An internal Israeli probe has concluded that the two soldiers were seriously wounded during their capture and at least one of them could now be dead.

Hezbollah has ignored a United Nation call for the immediate release of the soldiers, laid out in the cease-fire document that ended the war in August, and said Israel must first free Lebanese prisoners and possibly others held in its jails.