As Perez de Cuellar visited Iran, Israel released 51 of the nearly 400 Arab prisoners held by its proxy militia in South Lebanon in return for proof positive that one of seven missing Israeli soldiers is dead. That key step demonstrated Israel’s willingness to engage in a phased solution to the hostage impasse. The next day a radical Palestinian faction gave back the body of another Israeli war casualty; Israel agreed to let an exiled PLO activist, Ali Abu Hilal, return to the West Bank.
Israel’s continued cooperation hinged on prospects for the repatriation of Capt. Ron Arad, an Air Force navigator shot down over Lebanon in 1986. He is the only one of the Israeli MIAs believed to be alive. But with Israel on board ‘for the moment, the release of one or more of the 10 remaining Western hostages in Lebanon was expected. In Beirut, an underground group released a photo of British hostage Jack Mann, 77. Said Hussein Musawi, a leading member of the fundamentalist Party of God: “The process of swapping the hostages for the detainees will be moving forward.”
