Re: Families of MIAs Press for Return

Date: January 27, 2004

"4 Shvat 5764, Tuesday, January 27, 2004 14:49 IST

Families of MIAs press for return
By DAVID RUDGE

Families of four missing soldiers are urging the government to continue efforts to find and return their loved ones following the agreement to retrieve other MIAs announced this weekend.

Yona Baumel, father of Zacharia Baumel, who has been missing along with Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz since the Sultan Yacoub battle at the beginning of the Lebanon War in June 1982, has pressed the government and IDF to intensify their efforts.

Rina Hever, mother of Artillery Corps soldier Guy Hever, who disappeared while returning to his base on the Golan Heights in the middle of 1997, has also. She believes her son was kidnapped and is being held in Syria.

"There is no worse hell than uncertainty, so I am pleased for the families of the four held hostage by Hizbullah that there will soon be a conclusion," Baumel told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

"I would like to think that the issue of our MIAs, as well as Guy Hever and, of course, Ron Arad, will also come to a close," he said.
A few years ago, Baumel received half of his son's identification tag from Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. "I am convinced that Zak is alive and being held in Syria," Baumel said.

He noted that he met recently with the government's chief hostage negotiator in the German-brokered exchange with Hizbullah, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Ilan Biran, and asked that Syrians held by Israel not be included in any deal.

"We are all convinced that the MIAs are being held in Syria and that it is therefore immoral to include Syrian prisoners in this deal with Hizbullah. They could have managed with others and kept the Syrians for our boys," he said.

"We have reason to hope that some of our MIA's are alive but the authorities here, especially the IDF, believe that they are dead.
Rina Hever, in a interview Sunday with Israel radio, charged that the authorities were ignoring the case of her missing son and that his disappearance had dropped from the public eye.

There has been speculation that he might have been involved in an accident or went absent of his own accord, but no leads have been uncovered despite intensive searches at the time and subsequent inquiries.

Hever said that after six and a half years without any trace of him, there was no alternative but to conclude her son was being held against his will in Syria and to act accordingly.

Hever said that she met chief German mediator Ernst Uhrlau several weeks ago, raising the issue of her missing son and the belief he was being held captive in Syria.
Meanwhile, the family of missing IAF navigator Lt.-Col. Ron Arad has made clear that they do not want Israel to free any terrorists in return for his body if they receive proof that he is dead.

Arad's brother, Chen, was quoted in Yediot Aharonot as saying that this was also the expressed wish of their late mother, Batiya.
The family has so far declined to comment about the agreement reached with Hizbullah over the return of Israeli businessman, Lt.-Col. (res.) Elhanan Tannenbaum, and the bodies of St.-Sgts. Benny Avraham, Omar Sawayid, and Adi Avitan.

Tannenbaum's family had also remained quiet, though his daughter Keren gave a brief interview to television channels broadcast on Sunday night.

"Even though an agreement has been signed, my father is not yet on the plane and we won't believe it has happened until we can touch and hug him," Keren Tannenbaum said.
"We will hug him and tell him some private words of ours and show him his new granddaughter. I am my father's daughter and all I want is to have my father home, but we have to wait until he comes and afterwards there will be time to talk about everything.

She added, "We still hope, of course, that a miracle will happen and the soldiers will return alive, and that this deal will open the way for the return home of Ron Arad and the MIAs from Sultan Yacoub."

After years of saying he had no knowledge of the fate of Arad, Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Israel's most famous POW is in Lebanon Sunday.

At a news conference in Beirut, Nasrallah denied Israeli claims that Arad is in Iran.
"The Israelis claim that Ron Arad is in Iran, and I categorically deny this according to my personal follow-up of the issue," said Nasrallah, who is close to Iran and whose militant guerrilla group is backed by Tehran.

"Ron Arad is in Lebanon. He is not in Iran or elsewhere," he added. Nasrallah, however, did not shed any light on whether Arad was dead or alive.

AP contributed to this report.
©Jerusalem Post"