Despite Hezbollah report, the Ron Arad story is not over

For those who have been dealing for many years in the efforts to resolve the Ron Arad riddle, there are no illusions: the report on the missing navigator promised by Hezbollah as part of the new prisoners' exchange deal will not be the end of the story.

Hezbollah, like the vast majority of the security officials close to the case in Israel, believes that Arad died in Lebanon more than a decade ago. But the group will probably only present partial assumptions on the circumstance surrounding the disappearance of the navigator - and will certainly not offer any details on the location of the grave.

The debate in Israel as to what happened to Arad, and what precisely Hezbollah's Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah knows, will thus continue.

In its report, Hezbollah is expected to include a breakdown of its efforts to resolve the Arad riddle, as part B of the deal for the release of Elhanan Tannenbaum, reached toward the end of 2003. Contrary to some of the reports in the Israeli media Monday, it appears that there is no real way of forcing Hezbollah to reveal more details in the case. Under the circumstances, Israel will make do with what it receives - without being able to say definitively that the case is closed.

Arad and his pilot ejected over Lebanon following a malfunction in their aircraft on October 16, 1986, and he was captured by members of the Amal militia. At a later stage, Mustafa Dirani broke away from the leftist Shi'ite group and took Arad with him. In May 1988, paratroopers raided the village of Maidoun, and after Dirani was captured in an operation by IDF special forces in 1994, he told the agents who interrogated him that during the operation on the village, his men were holding Arad in the village of Nabi Sheit. The guards, and other Shi'ite militiamen, went to Maidoun, either as reinforcements or to remove the bodies of the dead. Taking advantage of the chaos, somebody - members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard or other Lebanese agents of Tehran - grabbed Arad.

That was the last time that Israel had definitive intelligence on the condition of Arad and the place where he was being held. Dirani, who was held in Israel 10 years, insisted that he did not know what happened to Arad afterward.

Since then, various bits of data - of uncertain veracity - have been received about Arad's fate. Some claimed that he was taken to Iran. Others place him in Lebanon during the early 1990s. Publicly, Israel blamed Tehran for Arad's disappearance since the mid-1990s, and has even claimed that he was held in Iran.

Currently, the dominant assumption in the defense establishment is that Arad died more than a decade ago. There is no clear proof on this matter, or a specific date on which there is consensus. The circumstances of his death are also unclear. According to one version, he died in 1990; another claims that he died between 1995 and 1997. It is assumed that he was held by Lebanese with ties to Iran, but it is not clear that the leadership in Iran received a detailed report about Arad's death. What is even less clear is whether Nasrallah knows; at no point did Hezbollah hold the downed navigator.

The assumption that Arad died in the mid-1990s is based on an analysis by Military Intelligence. However, a Mossad analysis suggested in 2003 that the defense establishment must continue to assume that Arad is alive, so long as there is no hard evidence to the contrary. At the time, MI chief Major General Aharon Ze'evi tried to convince then prime minister Ariel Sharon to set up another team to evaluate the situation, arguing that declaring Arad dead would strip the Lebanese of leverage. Sharon refused.

In an interview with Yossi Melman of Haaretz in 2003, Bernd Schmidbauer, a German minister who mediated for years between Israel and Hezbollah, said that his impression is that Arad is not alive.

Former air force chief Avihu Ben-Nun said yesterday that Arad should be declared dead. However, the state still has reservations. Defense sources argued that there is simply no information on which to to base such conclusion.

What might Hezbollah know about this? Theoretically the group had an opportunity to contribute to the return of Arad in 1991, in a deal mediated by the United Nations for the release of Western hostages in Lebanon.

Years later, when Iranian intelligence agents were arrested in Germany in 1992 for their involvement in the killing dissidents of the Islamic Republic in Berlin, another opportunity emerged for a trade that would resolve the Arad riddle. In both cases, Hezbollah and Iran did not opt for a deal.

In Israel there is no agreement among defense officials: some say Nasrallah just does not know; other suspect that Iran has vetoed a resolution of the issue.

In any case, the report that Israel will receive will not have the bottom line that will resolve the painful ordeal of the Arad family.

	Missing IAF navigator Ron Arad (Reproduction)