According to all the daily newspapers, cabinet ministers are now leaning in favor of the proposed prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hizbullah, intended to bring home Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev.

According to Karnit Goldwasser, Ehud’s wife, she met on Tuesday night with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who promised her the issue of the prisoner exchange deal involving the release of Samir Kuntar will be presented to the cabinet for a vote at Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting. The prime minister also told her that at present, he has not made up his mind regarding the proposed deal. It should be noted that there has never been a case in which the cabinet approved a prisoner deal that was not supported by the prime minister.

While cabinet ministers now appear willing to raise their hands in support of the deal, the intelligence and military communities remain adamantly against it, still operating under the premise that the two soldiers are dead. They feel that Israel cannot exchange live terrorists for the bodies of soldiers, insisting that Israel may only trade bodies for bodies.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)