Israel frees first of 5 Lebanese prisoners amid effort to return bodies of murdered Jewish community leaders

12 community leaders were abducted and murdered by terrorist organizations in mid-1980s

By <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Chenspec" title="User:Chenspec">Chenspec</a> - <span class="int-own-work" lang="en">Own work</span>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0" title="Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=144893920">Link</a>By Chenspec – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

All Israel News Staff | Published: September 3, 2026

The Israeli government has approved the release of five Lebanese citizens who were detained on suspicion of being affiliated with Hezbollah, as part of an effort to locate and return the bodies of Lebanese Jewish community leaders who were murdered in the eighties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Thursday confirmed earlier media reports, saying that he “as part of the negotiations with Lebanon… instructed that efforts be advanced to locate and repatriate the bodies of the leaders of the Jewish community in Lebanon, who were abducted and murdered by terrorist organizations in the mid-1980s.”

“In recent months, numerous operations have been carried out to locate them, both by Lebanon and Israel, including field operations,” the statement said.

The first of the five Lebanese citizens was released on Thursday, with the other four set to be transferred to Lebanon on Friday, according to media reports. Their release is reportedly meant as a gesture of goodwill from the Israeli side, in anticipation of progress in finding the location of the Jewish leaders’ bodies.

The statement noted that the five Lebanese citizens “were detained in areas under IDF control in southern Lebanon” during the fighting in recent months.

“Following the completion of their interrogation, it became clear that they are civilians who are not members of a terrorist organization, were not engaged in terrorism, and that there is no reason to continue holding them in Israel.”

According to Arabic-language media reports, the man handed over to the Lebanese army via the Red Cross on Thursday was identified as Malek Ghazi. A Lebanese official has told the AFP that over 30 Lebanese citizens were detained by Israel during the fighting since 2024.

Thursday’s release comes two days after Netanyahu met U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Michel Issa, in Jerusalem together with the local U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee, to discuss the ongoing negotiations between Lebanon and Israel.

It also followed several reports in recent days suggesting that Israel is disappointed with the Lebanese army’s deployment and lack of effective operations in the pilot zones in southern Lebanon, which were devised as a confidence-building step toward a full Israeli withdrawal.

However, Israeli defense officials assess that the Lebanese Army (LAF) has no interest in confronting Hezbollah and is therefore preparing for a continued stay of the IDF in the area.

The U.S. State Department meanwhile praised the Israeli move. “Israel is releasing detainees, and Lebanon is helping Israel recover the lost remains of Lebanese Jews,” a State Department official told media outlets.

The official further lauded the two sides for “demonstrating good faith through these initial steps, and hopes this will serve as the basis for expanded discussions on other civilian issues.”

According to i24 News, citing a source familiar with the matter, Israel recently requested Beirut to demonstrate “concrete steps” toward locating the bodies of the Jewish community leaders, transferring maps and photographs of cemeteries and other sites to help Lebanese authorities investigate them.

Another source familiar with the details added: “There is still a long way to go, but this is a good start.”

According to the report, Israel had already prepared an intelligence dossier on the “12 martyrs” with intelligence information, aerial photographs, and additional material that could help locate the burial sites before the ongoing rounds of negotiations with Beirut were launched.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu made this issue one of the central issues in the talks with the Lebanese,” an Israeli source told i24 News. The report also noted that Brig.-Gen. Gal Hirsch, the Coordinator for Prisoners and Missing Persons, is in direct contact with the families and recently met with a relative of one of the victims.

Israpundit is entirely dependent on readers support. Please help me continue educating people with the truth about what is going on in Israel and around the world.

USD:

ILS:

CDN:

September 4, 2026 | 1 Comment »

Leave a Reply

1 Comment / 1 Comment

  1. Avi Abelow on FB:

    The Lebanon Experiment Has Failed. It Is Time to Come Home.

    The experiment is over.

    According to a report on Israel’s Channel 14 last night, an Israeli political official now says openly that the Lebanese Army is not disarming Hezbollah and that Israel assesses with fairly high probability that elements of the Lebanese Army are actually coordinating their activities with Hezbollah. (Not a surprise considering MANY Lebanese army soldiers are Shiite Muslims with family members who are Hezbollah soldiers!)

    “The pilot has failed,” the official reportedly said. “There is no other way to define it.”

    Exactly.

    Now Prime Minister Netanyahu must tell the world the next basic truth:

    Israel can never again abandon its northern security to Lebanon, the United Nations or another piece of paper. Israel must remain in southern Lebanon, at least to the Litani River forever.
    We tried withdrawal.

    Israel pulled out IDF forces from the security zone in Lebanon in 2000. After the 2006 war, UN Security Council Resolution 1701 was supposed to prevent Hezbollah’s armed presence in southern Lebanon.

    Instead, Hezbollah transformed southern Lebanon into an Iranian military front against Israel. The United Nations and UNIFIL turned a blind eye and let it happen. Going against international guarantees and assisting the Iranian war effort against Israel.

    Netanyahu then gave diplomacy another chance. The Trump administration was given a chance to pressure Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah. The Lebanese government and Lebanese Army were given a chance to establish genuine sovereignty over their own territory.

    Diplomacy has failed, again.

    So why would we leave again and wait for the next October 7th from the north?

    A sovereign nation cannot repeatedly surrender territory from which its citizens are attacked and then pray that somebody else will prevent the jihadi enemy from returning.

    There is another historical truth that the world should know.

    The present Israel-Lebanon border is not some ancient sacred boundary.

    The Bible itself describes the inheritance of the tribe of Asher extending northward toward what is today Lebanon. Joshua 19:28 describes Asher’s territory reaching “as far as Greater Sidon,” and the very next verse takes its boundary to “the fortified city of Tyre.” Judges 1:31 again lists Sidon among the places associated with Asher’s allotted territory.

    Naphtali’s inheritance lay directly to Asher’s east. Joshua 19 describes Naphtali as bordering Asher on the west, while biblical-geography scholarship has interpreted its northern extent as reaching into the great valley between the Lebanon ranges.

    And Jewish presence there did not simply disappear with the biblical period.

    Tyre and Sidon had Jewish communities for centuries. Rabbinic sources record Jewish sages traveling to and teaching in Tyre in the Talmudic period. Tyre later became an important Jewish center, and the Land of Israel yeshiva was even based there for a period in the late 11th century. Sidon maintained a substantial Jewish community into modern times: historical research records hundreds of Jews there in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with synagogues, Talmud Torah schools and later Hebrew schools.

    Even David Ben-Gurion understood that today’s border was strategically unnatural.

    Writing about the geography of Eretz Yisrael before statehood, Ben-Gurion argued for the Litani River as the northern border for the Jewish state. The broader Zionist movement likewise sought a northern frontier reaching the Litani region during the post-World War I negotiations.

    British military thinking at the time also recognized the Litani as a far more natural defensible boundary than the artificial line ultimately drawn by Britain and France.

    More than a century later, we are paying in Jewish blood for ignoring that strategic geography.

    So the conclusion should no longer frighten us:
    Israel should control southern Lebanon permanently, at least to the Litani River, apply Israeli sovereignty where necessary for our permanent security, and ultimately reestablish Jewish communities there, because only a civilian presence will ensure a successful military defensive line.

    Not because Israel asked for this war.
    We didn’t.

    Not because we woke up one morning looking for another country to conquer.
    We didn’t.

    But because Hezbollah and Iran turned Southern Lebanon into a launching pad for jihad against the Jewish people, while Lebanon repeatedly demonstrated that it cannot, or will not, prevent it, and the international community allowed it, going against international agreements.

    And there must finally be a price for jihad.

    For too long, the Middle East learned the opposite lesson: Attack Israel, murder Jews, survive the Israeli response, wait for international pressure to force Israel to withdraw, and rebuild to attack another day.

    That equation must be reversed.

    Territory used to wage jihad against Israel cannot repeatedly be returned so that it can become a launching pad for the next jihadi attack.

    That is a lesson not only for Hezbollah, but for Hamas, Iran and every jihadist movement around the world watching.

    And this is part of Israel’s responsibility to the world: to demonstrate how a sovereign civilization actually defeats a jihadist enemy committed to its destruction. Defeat it and expel it.

    There is also something much deeper happening here.

    The Jewish people did not return home after 2,000 years merely to become dependent on UN resolutions, foreign governments and international guarantees.

    We returned to become sovereign again in the land God entrusted to our ancestors.

    God works through history in ways we cannot always understand while they are unfolding.

    We did not ask for October 7th. We did not ask for this war. We did not ask for Hezbollah to join Hamas and attack us in this war.

    Yet reality itself keeps forcing the Jewish people to abandon the failed assumptions of exile and rediscover what sovereignty means.

    Perhaps what looks like Israel being pushed into southern Lebanon is actually the Jewish people being pushed by history to come home.

    From victims to victors.
    From retreat to sovereignty.
    From depending upon others to defending ourselves.

    And, God willing, from war to the rebuilding and sanctification of the land entrusted to the Jewish people.

    Am Yisrael Chai!!!

    https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0Fx6GmxKkoDAqGcWhv4j7cGJxqJoQaCsUzMfYGRdShZRwRuFj9xcpmGw9CY9oCnUul&id=545522241