Five Lebanese prisoners released in Israeli efforts to recover bodies of murdered Lebanese Jewish leaders

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed Israeli officials participating in negotiations with Lebanon to intensify efforts to locate and return the bodies of leaders of Lebanon’s Jewish community who were abducted and murdered by terrorist organizations in the mid-1980s, the Prime Minister’s Office announced Thursday.

According to the statement, the initiative forms part of the ongoing talks between Israel and Lebanon. It seeks to resolve the decades-old cases of several prominent members of the Lebanese Jewish community whose bodies have never been recovered.

The Prime Minister’s Office said Netanyahu has been personally involved in the issue for decades, dating back to his tenure as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in the 1980s. The statement did not identify the victims or provide further details about the organizations responsible for their abduction and murder.

Efforts to locate the bodies have intensified in recent months, with both Israel and Lebanon undertaking searches and other measures, including operations on the ground, the office said. No details were provided about where the operations took place or whether investigators had identified possible burial sites.

Against the backdrop of what the Prime Minister’s Office described as significant efforts in the case, Israel decided to release five Lebanese civilians who had been detained in areas of southern Lebanon under Israel Defense Forces control.

The five were questioned by Israeli authorities before their release. According to the statement, the investigation found that they were civilians who did not belong to a terrorist organization and had not participated in terrorist activity.

Officials consequently determined that there were no grounds to continue holding them in Israel, the Prime Minister’s Office said.

The announcement presented the releases in connection with the broader negotiations and the effort to recover the bodies. However, it did not disclose when the five civilians were detained or released, nor did it clarify the precise relationship between their release and the search operations.